Clipper (2010)

There is often a desire to celebrate the visual richness of the everyday stuff which finds its way into my studio. Some of these things come from my family (I have bricoleurs on both my mother's and father's sides) while other objects arrive from more mysterious locations. Childhood Lego and Meccano play a part in these constructions, epitomising and restating the 'fitting-together-ness' of things that forms the basis of my practice, which these toys first initiated me into when I was young.

Ring (2007, detail)

In both strands of my practice the search for solutions to formal problems leans in the direction of what might be termed �right action� (in the Buddhist sense of the phrase). This can also be thought of as a quest for a certain kind of 'simple complexity' or a particular density of satisfying rhythms, volumes and associations.

On other occasions the process of making these works seems to have something in common with the solving of an equation, as the simplest and most �elegant� (in an almost mathematical sense) resolution of the piece is sought; one that uses the smallest possible number of �extraneous terms�, for example by using a minimum of unrelated components in the construction of the work. When working outwith the studio I tend to work almost exclusively with what is 'to hand'.

The Long Haul (1978 - 2010)