Artists Statement

I have always seen life as a problem and sculpting as a way to get through it.

When I sculpt, I take a premise and make it solid; carve a pattern into an idea; an emotion out of a slit. I balance truth on a doctored form; push a dream off its edge; throw beauty into rot. It's like trying to create a word that nobody ever heard before and yet understands. One that resounds - like an echo fills an abyss or one that is subtle - like a wink acknowledges a little shared truth. Often the task feels insurmountable and mostly it is, as I fail a lot more than I succeed.

From what little I understand and from all that I have read of our planetary existence, I see no significance to our being here and certainly no salvation from this earth. We are born of atoms from a universe that is hostile, contingent and indifferent and we reside on a planet of which there are trillions upon trillions in dark space. We are tiny, precarious and stranded. We fantasize about greatness, mythologize our behaviour, cling to notions of  'happily ever after' and tumble into chasms of bitter resentment  - gravely overlooking our delicate state of place and mind. Our biologically unique perspective enables us to invent,  and to reflect on our life and pending death. Burdened by fear and riddled with dreams, our tendency is to believe that we've been granted some special immunity from reality, that we can fairy tale above it or pray and float beyond it. To me this utopian thinking ultimately leads to a divisiveness which ensures doom: providence is a myth and disappointment is its reality. The theory of evolution is a fact of life. It seems to me that we carry no soul, spirit or ghost within us, that we are inclined to create pretend worlds and  pretend to live in them, that we are more comfortable with lies than truth, are motivated and deluded by both hope and fear and are rapidly diminishing behind a narcissistic blind.

Nobody asked to come here and few will choose when to leave; the products of chance and necessity, stuck, in this wondrous existence  together.

The challenge for me as a sculptor and observer is to try to find a way to relate to a world that feels worlds away. The gap is immense. I pour humour into it.

My quest for clarity in this tangled existence is why my ideas take form. I persist in creating sculpture with the intention to provoke and through the process find a kind of liberation for and from myself.