The landscape of eastern Harris is both rugged and beautiful in the extreme, with exposed rock three thousand million years old left by scouring glaciers from the last ice age. The energy and presence of such surroundings are powerfully conveyed in Dilworth’s work and he is renowned for using a vast range of natural materials, mostly found on the island. Indeed Dilworth used ‘once-living’ objects in his work long before it was fashionable in contemporary art.

The internal and external parts of his sculptures are considered equally, and many are containers holding other elements, some visible, some not. His ritualised method of construction adds a shamanistic quality to his work. This primitivist element is almost always present although some of his elegant formal carvings owe more to a modernist inspiration.