If I Had To Describe My Work

When I Was At Art School, A Lot Of Art Education Is About Art Being A Means Of Self-expression, And As An 18-year-old I Didn't Know If I Had A Huge Amount I Wanted To Express. It Was A Big Moment When I Decided I Wanted To Shift The Emphasis Or The Intention Of My Art From Something I Disgorged Myself Upon And Something That Actually Fed Me Or Made Me See The World Or Understand The World.

For Me Looking, Touching, Material, Place And Form Are All Inseparable From The Resulting Work. It Is Difficult To Say Where One Stops And Another Begins. Place Is Found By Walking, Direction Determined By Weather And Season. I Take The Opportunity Each Day Offers: If It Is Snowing, I Work In Snow, At Leaf-fall It Will Be Leaves; A Blown Over Tree Becomes A Source Of Twigs And Branches.

When I’m Working With Materials It’s Not Just The Leaf Or The Stone, It’s The Processes That Are Behind Them That Are Important. That’s What I’m Trying To Understand, Not A Single Isolated Object But Nature As A Whole.

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.

If You've Ever Come Across A Tree That You've Lived With For Many Years And Then One Day It's Blown Over, There's Incredible Shock And Violence About That.