She got into woodcarving after attempts to express her feelings in clay. The soft, pliable material, however, did not suit her, did not meet her expectations in terms of the need to express her inner world. Woodcarving is very atypical for the gentle sex and Mária Žilavá is the first woman to use wood as a means of expression. Wood enchanted her so much that she quickly penetrated its mysteries and managed to subdue it so well that nothing could surprise her. She succeeded at the threshold of retirement, relatively late, and yet her work contributed to the development of woodcarving both here and abroad. Her first encounters with wood were natural growths, where she respected the natural form of the material. Then her work progressed to so-called totems, where she started from the natural shape of the wood and worked it in relief from all sides. She found in them a rich development of ideas, used her unique solution of the theme, which she developed across the entire surface. She processed each head individually, without schematizing, thereby creating the overall character of the totem (Pillar of Life, Old Bones). In her relief work, she often did not aim to depict a specific, real situation, but through the depicted figures, she spoke about her feelings, about her inner experience of the world. She projected her rich world of ideas and fantasies, as well as some experiences, into her carving work. She materialized her natural sense of beauty, documented fragments of her life in it. At the symposium in Východná, in 1975, she created the sculptures Key of the Festival and Song and Drunkards, that however succumbed to the ravages of time.