We look at Ice Age artefacts, carved on animal bone some 40.000 years ago or so, as evidence of the arrival or origin of the 'modern mind' - evidence of the original development of language, of tools and abstract thought. We see and admire these carvings as precise carriers of the essence of a time long gone, which still speaks to us in the most startling directness through these objects today. Have we, as individuals, changed and developed much since?​​ Should it be possible for me - equipped with tools not very dissimilar to those of the first Ice Age carvers - to make something that carries the essence of my time?​

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I think of my work and of my ideal audience as existing some 30.000 years in the future from now. My work would be assessed as an archaeological finding and -as the sole evidence of my time- it would, ideally, be directly compared to those early Ice Age carvings. What would this future audience be able to infer from this comparison? What would it reveal about the change and development of human consciousness and society?

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It would be easy to point towards technology and say: here is the evidence of change. But to try and measure the change in art - in a traditional medium / the medium of carving, which in itself has changed very little over millennia- to me is the ultimate challenge.

 

In believe that for a work of art to be able to reflect the unprecedented level of complexity of the 21st century and the long history of human thought and achievements- art must reach for fundamental simplicity. To be all inclusive and to reflect complexity in a mirror-like manner, it must exclude all that is not fundamental / foundational / original. It must, therefore, tap deep into the subconsciousness, accessed through spontaneous thought, as much as into conscious knowledge and analysis in the realm of science.

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To not progress in a forwards kind of manner, but to seek out the utmost limit by not moving away from the Origin. To make the same thing by examining 'Origin' from different angles in thought in the light of new knowledge, thus covering at once extremely minute and large distances in time. By 'tying' those forms which can emerge and change in fractions of seconds in the mind to forms carved in wood in a lengthy process over weeks and months, they can be observed as if magnified. By using the medium of carving, the essential principles and materials of which have not changed since the Ice Age, by not having moved away much at all from the tools and principles of those very early makers of art, by being tied to the Origin of Art / the Origin of Itself in every way, I try to measure change by focussing on that which is invariant. 

 

This places responsibility entirely on the form of the line, inscribed in the natural surface, as the sole carrier of information. Everything should be derivable from there. 

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This is my Utopia.​