Brutish burls make gnarly art Drawn to their unique grain pattern, carver gravitates to trees’ ungainly outgrowths The Creators
By: AV Kitching Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 6, 2025

There’s more to a burl than meets the eye. On the surface the flawed wood is a gnarly, lumpy mess. But beneath the scars hides something rather special.

“Burls are an unappealing wart-like growth on a tree,” artist Gary Foidart, 69, explains.

“They are horrific looking on the outside. Some of them look terrible. You never know what you are going to hit when you cut a burl open but the wood inside is the most beautiful wood there is. Each one is totally unique.”

Bulbous and rough, a wood burl forms when a tree experiences stress or disruption to its growth. Burls can also develop from insect infestation, bacterial or fungi growth, and environmental injuries.

As the tree heals, wood fibres twist and compress into complex patterns, resulting in a knotty, swollen mass.

“The fact that it is a healing process of the tree, I find it very interesting… I find it amazing,” Foidart says. “Burls are very difficult to work with. There is a high failure rate because of rot and void, where there is an empty space in the middle of the burl. And the interlocking grain makes it almost impossible to carve with hand tools. You have to use power carving tools to shape the burl.”

Foidart has been carving burls for more than 30 years now. He started off making knife handles from a burl he’d sourced from his father’s property by Roseisle before moving on to making side tables.

The sculptor learned everything he knows from books, borrowing tomes on carving from his local library in West Kildonan, which he pored over as he continued to perfect his craft.

These days he carves year-round in his workshop in Winnipeg Beach, and posts his latest creations on his Facebook page.

“I was a lifelong Winnipegger until the day COVID hit. I retired from my job at Health Sciences Centre and decided to become a full-time carver. I sold my house in the city — I was working out of a little dingy, cramped basement shop — and moved to my new house here. It has helped me enormously in my carving. Surroundings matter,” he shares.

He harvests all his own burls, keeping his eyes peeled when out on hikes for the knobbly-looking protuberances most often found at the base of trees. He works mostly with Manitoba maple, ash, oak and birch.

“My favourite wood is Manitoba maple because of the colours you can get. Lots of different reds, which really come out in the finish. I am known for my finishes. I use a technique called French polish, which is a very time-consuming hand-applied finish that shows off the grain perfectly. There is a tactile quality to it — it feels smooth like velvet under your hand,” he says.

The artist’s main objective is to highlight the grain of the wood. He mostly carves birds in soaring poses, using as much surface area as possible to show off the wood.

“I want the beauty of the grain to really jump out at you,” he says.

He has recently ventured into abstract sculptures.

“Abstract is difficult because, as opposed to carving an eagle or an owl, there is no end point. You are just removing wood into a form… which is… it’s surprisingly difficult to do. When I am working on an abstract sculpture I am very much led by the burl.”

He doesn’t see himself tiring of burl wood and will continue carving for as long as he physically can.

“It’s the beauty of the medium. When you are working with burls, as you sand down, every millimetre changes like a kaleidoscope in front of you. You sand a little bit more and a different grain appears. It changes before your eyes until you completely finish the piece. I was in my 30s when I first started, and it still has the capacity to surprise me.”

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca