Art is not a career - it's a life..

It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt..

Sometimes you need to stop doing something to really see it afresh..

The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audien….

Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form..

Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work..

It's art that's taught me to think and to write..

My work comes first, reasons for it follow..

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 s….

I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames..

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 par….

There are occasions when I have moved boulders, but I'm reluctant to, especially ones that have been rooted in a place for many years..

I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones..

There is life in a stone. Any stone that sits in a field or lies on a beach takes on the memory of that place. You can feel that stones have witnesse….

You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born..

Beauty is what sustains things, although beauty is underwritten by pain and fear..

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 b….

Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving..

When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that's a very beautiful balance..

If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time..

In contact with materials, I can see so much more with my hands than I can just with my eyes. I'm a participant, not a spectator. I see myself both a….