Mother and Child is one of Tiktak’s most beautiful and moving examples of his favourite theme. The sculpture is notable in part for its relatively small scale and because the mother’s body is truncated at roughly hip level. Its modest size makes it easy to hold in one’s hands, which lends the work a sense of intimacy not typically found in Tiktak’s oeuvre. The artist beautifully adapted his style to the smaller scale; the work is carved with extraordinary sensitivity, even though Tiktak leaves the marks of his files and rasps as he is wont to do. Tiktak masterfully balances the rugged and the delicate in this small masterpiece.

Compositionally, balance is an important aspect of this work as well. The forward tilt of the mother’s body is echoed beautifully by the arched body of her energetic older child. In his brief introduction to the landmark 1970 solo exhibition catalogue, George Swinton called Tiktak a poet and was moved to write about his sculpture in rather poetic language. This short excerpt seems particularly apt here: “Child growth from mother’s body: exudes, extrudes, arches, stretches, strains, lives.” Yet another sense of balance that Tiktak achieves admirably in Mother and Child is that between solid and open spaces. Swinton had famously compared Tiktak to the British sculptor Henry Moore; the harmonious interplay of positive forms and negative spaces in this work of genius makes it difficult to disagree.