Page 176 - Bulletin 8 2004

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It too was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1931. In 1935 she was
commissioned by Mr. F. G. A. Roberts of Johannesburg to produce a swimming trophy to

be awarded to the winning team at the annual inter-varsity Diving and Swimming
Competition. This showed a mermaid sweeping across the face of a wave. (Figs. 4.11 &

4.12).

Although executed at different times over some 10 years, The Spirits of the Wind, The

Crest of the Wave, and the Swimming Trophy are kindred pieces through their association
with wind and water, flowing energy, and perfect human form. (Fig. 4.13).

Moonflower is a beautiful piece in bronze of a girl poised in evening gown. It is the final

stage in a sequence that started with a drawing that became a cement form showing a young

girl offering up the lamp of truth. (Fig. 4.14).

Another bronze, exhibited in 1933 at the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, and of unknown

whereabouts, was called Thor or Thunderbolt. It was may have been a representation of the
idea in a drawing titled Windy Witch, and may have been inspired by memories of the

electric storms of her youth on the Highveld. (Figs. 4.15 & 4.16).

In 1929 Wynne ventured into sculpture in marble inspired by a concept embraced by
Theosophy: ‘The Dweller on the Threshold’. The Dweller is an invisible, possibly

malevolent presence, representing the sum-total of good and bad accumulated in past lives

and which has to be confronted in this life. Wynne’s marble Dweller, about two-and-a-half
feet high, towers over a young person who, awakening to the reality of what her life style

portends, tries to push it away. Moving from plaster to stone was a new experience: the
two-way process in plaster of adding on and taking off, and correcting mistakes, contrasts

with the one-way process in stone, of careful removal to reveal the form that is present in
the artist’s imagination and latent within the lump of stone. The process is one-way because

material once removed cannot be put back on, and so mistakes cannot be corrected.