A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.
As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.
Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.
People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.
A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels.
The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.
I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.
Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.
Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.
Not being able to touch is sometimes as interesting as being able to touch.
I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.
I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.
I soon realised that what had happened on a small scale cannot necessarily be repeated on a larger scale. The stones were so big that the amount of heat required was prohibitively expensive and wasteful.
Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.
The relationship between the public and the artist is complex and difficult to explain. There is a fine line between using this critical energy creatively and pandering to it.
The first stone was just tried in the spirit of experimentation. The opening of the stone was far more interesting than the drawing that I had done on it.
The early firings contained many stones.
The stones tear like flesh, rather than breaking. Although what happens is violent, it is a violence that is in stone. A tear is more unnerving than a break.
