Original Wood Assemblage - 'Yellow Bird'

Laird Campbell works from a studio in the Cowichan Valley on the east coast of Vancouver Island, where the natural world — its light, its textures, its quiet insistence — is never far from the work. His practice centres on the transformation of found and aged wood into abstract compositions that are built by hand, piece by piece, the way a poem is built word by word: intuitively, patiently, with an ear for what the material wants to say. Campbell is challenged and inspired by aged wood, aspiring to work with it as freely as a pencil — scribbling and doodling until something worth keeping emerges.

There is something irresistible about a yellow bird — a flash of colour against the muted palette of the coast, a note of brightness in the grey-green world of the Pacific Northwest. 'Yellow Bird' holds that quality: a composition that feels at once grounded and light, weighted by the density of its materials yet lifted by something harder to name. The title invites you to look for the bird, and in looking, you find it — or something like it — in the geometry of the wood, the warmth of the grain, the way the pieces fit together like a small, perfect thing.

This original work is a Wood Assemblage: a hand-built composition of numerous reclaimed wood pieces, each selected for its grain, age, and surface quality, set within a beautifully crafted frame that is itself part of the work.

Medium: Original Wood Assemblage (reclaimed and found wood)
Dimensions: 18 × 14" (45 × 35 cm)
Framing: Inset in a 1/4" thick wood frame, 1" deep
Authenticity: One-of-a-kind original; signed by the artist

Exhibited: Sooke Fine Arts Exhibition, 2022; Federation of Canadian Artists Gallery, 2024 Beautiful BC Artist Spotlight, Presented by the Nature Trust of BC