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.

When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that's the beginning of its life.

Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.

I go way beyond just the wood and stone but to the process of growth and farming and the tensions between the two.

The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.

My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays-integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit.

The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.