Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.

When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that’s the beginning of its life.

At its most successful, my ‘touch’ looks into the heart of nature; most days I don’t even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient – only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete.

The photography is not the aim of the work; the articulation of the work through photography is another way of understanding what’s going on and what’s happening outside.

My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds – what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.

My art recognizes the human place, the human context – especially in Britain, which is a landscape so worked by people for thousands of years, written, deeply ingrained with the presence of people.

As with all my work, whether it’s a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I’m trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.

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.

It’s just that when I work on someone else’s land, it makes me aware of the social nature of that landscape.

I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole. I find nature as a whole disturbing. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn’t walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.