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.

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.

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.

I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.

Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.

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.

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