Emily Young was a huge inspiration when I first started and the catalyst for my faces and meeting her at Thirsk Sculpture Park was hugely informative. Seeing a face emerge from a block of stone will never cease to be wonderful and very motivational. Through my desire to capture character and human emotion in stone I’ve developed my own carving process using the pointing tool. This has enabled me to develop portraits in clay and carve just the face directly into rough blocks of stone such as the Sadhu series.

There is something magical when a face starts to emerge from a piece of stone and its features, expression and mood take shape and develop over time with each carving action. Its there, its tactile, its almost real and I start to form a connection to it and give it a name, Freda, Emily, Ernest. It has a presence, unchanging, calm, reflective like a friend.

The Francis Bacon inspired pieces reimagine Bacon's brush strokes, colours and forms on canvas into three dimensions. A sort of painting from life in reverse.