I create sculptural pieces in stone using traditional hand carving techniques from my workshop in Bollington, on the edge of the Peak District. My sculptures emerge out of a sense of the weight of deep time held within the rock itself. My work celebrates the sheer durability of matter and substance. It points to the resilience of natural things and to the power of endurance of the human spirit.

I am fascinated by the often violent forces that first brought the rock into existence. Held within the body of stone are the scars, bruises and transformations that testify to its journey through time. I respond to strata or forms in the rock, feeling my way through points of resistance and light, asking what lies at its centre, what it wants to be.

For me, making sculpture is an interaction, a form of conversation with the stone. Wetting the stone, I see its veins and pigments, I smell the mineral richness of the material. As my tools make contact with the stone, I am an excavator, removing the layers to reveal its core.

Inspired by ancient stone sculpture, I see sculpting as something of a sacred act. An act of reverence for mother earth and an expression of the very human impulse to leave a mark: something with the power to communicate far into the future.

I came to sculpting after a career in social justice and climate campaigning. As I sculpt, the stories that inspired my activism are never far from my thoughts. The fissures that remind us of the obstacles yet to be overcome, grief at our deepening separation from the natural world, and hope at the human capacity for gentleness, love and protection.