If You've Ever Come Across A Tree

I'm An Artist Living In A Small, Scottish Village. So One Would Expect To Be Treated With Some Sort Of Caution. And The Village And The Farmers Have Shown Enormous Tolerance Of Me And Interest In What I Do. I Mean, They Don't Necessarily Understand What I'm Doing All The Time. But They, You Know, I Think They Respect What I Do And That There Is A Connection Between What They Do With The Land And What I Do, You Know, That We're Both Dependent On Weather And Respond To That.

If You've Ever Come Across A Tree That You've Lived With For Many Years And Then One Day It's Blown Over, There's Incredible Shock And Violence About That.

Looking, Touching, Material, Place And Form Are All Inseparable From The Resulting Work. It Is Difficult To Say Where One Stops And Another Begins. The Energy And Space Around A Material Are As Important As The Energy And Space Within. The Weather--rain, Sun, Snow, Hail, Mist, Calm--is That External Space Made Visible. When I Touch A Rock, I Am Touching And Working The Space Around It. It Is Not Independent Of Its Surroundings, And The Way It Sits Tells How It Came To Be There.

The Essence Of Drawing Is The Line Exploring Space.

It's Just That When I Work On Someone Else's Land, It Makes Me Aware Of The Social Nature Of That Landscape.