Winter makes a bridge between one year and another and, in this case, one century and the next.
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.
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.
If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time.
Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.
I see my work plagiarized in gardening programmes and decorating programmes and car adverts, and I suppose I have to accept that’s just the way art gets assimilated into culture.
Three or four stones in one firing will all react differently. I try to achieve a balance between those that haven’t progressed enough and those about to go too far.
It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.
I think I have been fashioned by the fickle weather of Britain that it is – it’s forever changing. There’s no kind of constant sun or dry weather or freezing weather, and I’m always having to change and adapt to that.
As you grow older you realize that art has an enormous effect. It’s frightening sometimes to think of the effect that we can have.
I’m dealing with the most important things there are: life and nature. If this doesn’t work, if this doesn’t sustain me, I can’t go back to nature. I’m right there. There’s nowhere to go, and that frightens me.
The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below.
I have to understand the nature of change. And I cannot just work with stone or the more permanent materials. I need to work with leaves and ice and snow and mud and clay and water and the rising tide and the wind and all these.
Art is not a career – it’s a life.
Stones are checked every so often to see if any have split or at worst exploded. An explosion can leave debris in the elements so the firing has to be abandoned.
I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.
The main source of my income is through the commissions of the large-scale works and big sculptures, the projects.
We often forget that we are nature...
I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole. I find nature as a whole disturbing. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn’t walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.
The hardened mass of liquid stones had much stronger qualities than those which had simply torn. The skin remained a recognisable part of the molten stone.