Granite with Basalt Book

Sculpturing stone is a slow process of hammer and chisel and diamond cutting and polishing. Then hand polishing with wet and dry, up to ten grades to final finish. Its a balance of worked and unworked surfaces that allows the material presence its place, sometimes adding texture. My effort as sculptor is to express the stony feel of our landscape in simple forms. In stone from the local beaches of Cornwall we can easily see the writhing of the earth’s cooling crust under pressure. The Lizard Peninsula is one of few places where deeper mantle layers have been exposed on the surface, in the many varieties and colours of Serpentine rock. Cornish granite stretches from Bodmin to Lands End varying in colour and density. Gabbro and even the hard elvan can be worked to reveal the inner shine.

Osho

Found Osho as a spiritual master in 1983, so a meditative life arose then.

Since that time have spent four years in several communes dedicated to sharing his vision, in Europe and India. Then more years traveling through West Europe, settling again in Scotland many years ago and since 2003 in The Lizard, Cornwall.

For me creativity arises out of meditation, and art is the expressive play of form with that which is formless. Thus the highest art form is in allowing oneself to melt into the formless, to disappear as a someone.

In this view the ‘form’ of artist is the fool dancing on the edge of the abyss, just a last game before disappearing, another play at being something, anything, awhile longer. There is no meaning to be sought in such a play, it is more an invitation to share a dance, take a chance.

Hence what influences my art is nothing, the void, emptiness, silence, death, and how to allow such presence amid the myriad forms of life. We tend to choose those forms that cloak and disguise such awareness. Meanwhile, the door of Nature is always open, life and death one inseparable whole, and wood has become for me a many levels mirror of my dance.