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.

Everything has the energy of its making inside it.

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.

People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.

A lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the rhythm of it. It is different than patience. It is not thinking. It is working with the rhythm.

I think that I'm always trying to get beyond the surface appearance of things, to go beyond what I can just see.

Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.