How long have you been creating?

Oh dear, this is going to reveal why my beard is so white! I started as a monk, illustrating, in the '60s. By the 70s I was teaching pottery, and married. In the 90s I started studying sculpture part-time, and discovered glass as a medium just a couple of years ago.

What is your media of choice?

Glass. I love it's qualities, the translucency, its fluidity. I fuse it with metals to colour it, giving me a restricted earthy palette.

Everything I do is drawn first, so you may see me with a pencil more often than with a glasscutter!

What are you motivations for creating?

I don't know. My fingers just itch to make, I have to obey them.

I'm greatly inspired by the works of people in the landscape, particularly the monoliths, stone circles and menhirs of Britain, which I use a lot in my work.

What other artists or movements inform your work?

Picasso and Matisse. Rodin, Frink, Hepworth, all can be seen in my work. Of living artists, Goldsworthy, Long, and Gormley have all made me think.

I don't know that I fit into any glass art school... I've yet to hear of it if I do. I'm not really a conventional glass artist, rather a sculptor who works in glass.

What do you find visually stimulating right now?

Light, colour, the human form. The things people have done to their environment, since people started altering the Earth.

What's the last book you read?

I'm reading Muriel Spark, a tale of subversive geriatrics. I just finished Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series of 10 volumes, and wish he's get on with the eleventh!

Tell us a little about the layering process you use in your work.

I use sheet glass. Because I'm going to re-melt it, it's important that it all comes from one original batch of glass, else the stresses in the finished form will eventually break it apart.

On the glass I'll apply metal (oxide, powder, wire, or leaf), maybe some powdered glass, and then more glass, more metals. I'll draw in and with the metals, and brush it as I want it. Finally it's given a coat of enamel or glass powder.

Everything must be planned: the work is in my head, not in front of me. The metals will oxidise inside the glass, giving new colours (silver makes yellow, copper red or green, brass gives turquoise, and so on). All the glass is opaque, not clear. The eventual work won't be seen till after the firing, which can take up to 4-5 days.

This process may be repeated 2 or 3 times.

(A very important note to any reader who wants to try this: Beware! Cuts are frequent. There's some blood in most of my work! And powdered glass and metal are both lethal).

What would you like your fellow EBSQ artists and our collectors to know about you and/or your work?

Artists: I love to talk! My techniques are not trade secrets, so do ask if you want to know how something is done. Also, criticism is always welcome, please!

Collectors: I love a challenge, so like commissions. In particular, I'm interested in site-specific, large-scale glass sculpture.