1 If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
A gardener
2. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
William Eggleston
3 What is your favourite ‘ism’?
Spoonerism
4 What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
Nobody’s written anything really intelligent yet, I’ll have to wait for more reviews.
5. And the dumbest?
Are those trees?
7 Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
Michael Schnabel – Silent Mountains Series (2003)
8 Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
Yes, I want to be able to support myself, and continue to be able to make work, but I also want my work to be accessible.
9 What are the three big ideas that you would like your work to express?
My work explores my ongoing and changing relationship with the forest.
I am interesting in how we form our understanding and experience of landscape from social and historical influences and how these affect our own personal experience of the natural world.
I aim to express my experience of spending long periods of time alone in the forest, sometimes at night – the absorbing and meditative kind of heightened awareness that comes from silence and stillness.
10 Are you a political artist?
Politics is not the central theme of my work but its impossible to completely ignore Politics.
11 How do you start the process of making work?
Making lists and drawing pictures and diagrams which are a bit like story boards.
12 What next?
Black
13 If Moma and the Tate and the Pompidou wanted to acquire one of your works each, which would you want them to have?
I’ve just completed three new bodies of work ‘Come with Me’, ‘Knit one, Pearl one’ and ‘The Gloaming’ – I’d like them to have a piece from one of these series’ because I always feel more strongly engaged with work I’ve just made.
14. What is your favourite cheese?
How to decide! – probably really good Cheddar.
15. What’s next for you?
Three weeks in the New Forest working on a new series – got the idea sorted, now I’ve just got to make it… and pray for bad weather.
