“I remember reading a story as a kid in Japan...it was from the 'folktales of "Oita", the region in which I was brought up and the story was about a priest, who decided to carve a passage through a mountain because travellers kept falling to their deaths from the treacherous path which ran along the cliff edge. I think it took him over twenty years. I remember being hugely impressed with the idea that one person could even think to carve through a mountain. I later visited the passageway where the marks of his chisels could still be seen.

Stone carving requires a huge amount of persistence and determination but once you get to grips with the material , it can be surprisingly flexible and the work itself is strangely meditative. The process of carving stone is like a kind of active dreaming . The material has a density, an unforgiving nature and sense of permanence but the work I do is more about trying to convey an idea of transformation, of fragility and lightness.” - Alyosha Moeran