Henry Moore was the first twentieth century artist that I recall as a child.
His work fascinated me - I wanted to touch it and to engage with it.
However, it was while watching interviews with Elizabeth Frink on television that I realised I wanted to become a sculptor.
She spoke directly to me in words that made sculpture both engaging and very accessible.
She had the ability to pass on her passion for working in this media, making it exciting, powerful and immediate.
She instilled in me the feeling that by broadening the horizon and not closing it down, anything in sculpture is possible.
Although many of my works are born out of pain and suffering and injustice, they have positive, reflective and, above all,
hopeful resolutions.
As an ex-engineer, I have a great interest in materials, particularly in their true nature.
As a child, my father gave me a piece of shrapnel which missed him during
the Second World War and which he kept as a lucky charm. Every grain of the metal had been ripped apart,
forming a wonderful yet terrible lattice construction of extreme strength and deadly sharpness.
It is the combination of the polished smooth forms of Moore and Brancusi flowing into the suggested whole,
then being torn apart to reveal the pure nature of the materials that is fundamental to the overall agenda of my work.
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