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.
The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.
Design implies a sense of mapping something out and then you follow the plan.
I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue.
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.
When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that’s a very beautiful balance.
We leave our presence in the pavement. We’re walking over it, sitting on steps.
The first snowball I froze was put in my mother’s deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.
A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
It’s frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.
It’s art that’s taught me to think and to write.
My work comes first, reasons for it follow.
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.
People do not realise that many of my works are done in urban places. I was brought up on the edge of Leeds, five miles from the city centre-on one side were fields and on the other, the city.
If you lay in the rain, every rain shower, storm, whatever, is different. Every surface is different.
I just see myself as an object in the final image. I know I’m experiencing it when I’m there working on it. I’m there to be worked with, as anything else that I work with.
The main reason I went to digital was because I got time-lapse, video, and still images all in one camera. Having a minimal amount of gear is really important for someone who wants to walk around. That allowed me to have this flexibility to document things in different ways.
Sometimes you need to stop doing something to really see it afresh.
If you repeat something, it can become pointless. Some things can repeat and be endlessly fascinating.
Fear always accompanies the making of art, generated by the shock of seeing an idea taking its form. A sculpture in the mind is safe and secure – the actual work rarely behaves as intended.
My art helps make sense of things.