This work is an example of direct carving, which emerged as a cohesive movement, with an aesthetic vital to modern sculpture. It was regarded as a particularly British pursuit. Artists believed this technique respects the nature of the material at hand, known as ‘truth to material’.  The release of the torsos’ form from the narrow tree trunk is the result of the artist’s interaction with the wood as he makes sensitive use of its red grain with a high degree of finish. 

Torsos is a combination of abstract and representational elements, rendered in fluid contours, showing two intertwined and static figures standing on their separate pairs of legs but also supporting each other – this is another approximation of the figura serpentinata, since the figures rotate around a central core.