Tobias Luttmer

Tobias Luttmer’s sculptures of owls, foxes and other wild creatures are unusual hybrids. Luttmer combines different materials, often stainless steel and wood, to create interesting contrasts between warm and cool or rough and smooth surfaces.

    Sculpted metal heads are perched on more minimalist wooden bodies. Steel feet – and sometimes tails – are found at the other end. The wood sometimes looks like it might be a sheath over a metal core, but Luttmer says the head and feet are actually separate pieces cobbled to the wood.

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Tobias Luttmer, "Burly Bear", 2013, stainless steel and maple burl, 9” x 13”

Tobias Luttmer, "Burly Bear", 2013, stainless steel and maple burl, 9” x 13”

    Luttmer, a self-taught artist, says his work is a battleground for his competing interests in realism and abstraction. His pieces veer off the well-trodden path of representational animal sculpture, and are original enough to be interesting while retaining a familiarity that preserves their commercial potential. 

    His love of stainless steel, which he shapes with a welder, is clear. “It’s just such a wonderful material to work with,” he says. “It does everything I want it to do.” But the Calgary artist is quick to add that he also enjoys the reductive process of carving, using woods like walnut and maple.

    Luttmer’s gallery work is suitably sized for display on a coffee table, but he is also starting to do larger public art projects. He recently unveiled a 13-foot welded-steel tree, a commissioned work that sits outside a downtown Calgary condominium.

Tobias Luttmer is represented by Webster Galleries in Calgary, the Avenue Gallery in Victoria, and the White Rock Gallery in White Rock, B.C. His work sells for $2,000 to $10,000.