Cairns & Composition

One other often overlooked feature of the Oban war memorial is the pedestal. Built in the style of a highland cairn of local stone it is beautifully proportioned and constructed, perhaps the finest of its kind in Scotland. It almost looks as though the builder selected each stone carefully by hand, considering the colour, shape and proportion of each stone before they were set in place. Again as at Lochawe Carrick saw the pedestal as an integral part of the monument, the tapering line of the pedestal continuing up along the sloping sides of the sculpture to the soldier's heads.

In his book 'Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure' Carrick's teacher professor Eduard Lanteri advised his students not to begin the sketch model of a group by modelling seperate figures. Instead 'throw a lump of clay on your stand, and knock it into the general shape you have conceived...By thus evolving your composition out of a lump of clay the group becomes more compact, it has a sculptural quality which it would not have if the figures were modelled separately and then grouped...I have seen groups of three figures, where the six legs looked like six posts supporting three unhappy torsos...Michel Angelo has laid down the rule that a group should be so compactly composed that, if it is rolled down a hill, none of the limbs would break off.

Early in his career Carrick won a competition to carve sculptures depicting the McCaig family for the niches inside McCaig's Tower overlooking Oban. For some unknown reason the commission was never realised.