I became obsessed with making more and more tiny things. I think I was trying to find a way of compensating for my embarrassment at having learning difficulties: people had made me feel small so I wanted to show them how significant 'small' could be.

My teacher said my brain was the size of a pea. He made my life miserable by singling me out in the classroom as a failure.

I'm like a mad professor, but without the spiky hair.

When I was a kid, I had trouble at school because of my learning disabilities. Carving is my body compensating for the lack of other skills.

I work between my heartbeat. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don’t inhale my own work.

At school I'd want to be so small that nobody could see me, and so my work depicts and reflects me - what it felt like to grow up in a world of pain.

All creatures are great and small.