[Q] You could have made elegant, beautiful, graceful, abstract, coloured steel sculptures for decades and been a very successful artist in making those.

Yeah, I could have gone on. That's when you get suspicious – when it's easy. You know, you can do one or two easy, but watch out, watch out. I don't say you've got to have a problem but you've got to have an issue somewhere. You can't just make more. I think it... it's the most boring thing. It's... it becomes... it becomes a sort of the old gramophone syndrome – it's the same old thing, you know. It's like teaching; you cannot teach when it's... when it's... when you're not thinking of the answer. When you know the answer already it's too easy. You've got to be challenged. If you can't be challenged, then challenge yourself. And I think this is... this answers all sorts of questions like... about going on workshops, or about people saying to you, ‘Will you... will you do something completely different, like the interior of a building or something?’ All these are... are the sort of things that suddenly become worth... worth addressing, or a new sort of sculpture. It's worth addressing those. Don't address something that... that's a walkover, you know. Very like... like tennis or something like that; just like tennis. I'm very interested in the way tennis players behave and their sort of... the way they pace themselves, the way they practise and... and how they come to do it naturally, how they come to forget the strokes that they've practised. But they bring them in. It's very like that, you know. You focus very hard on things that you can almost do them in a practice situation until, in the end, then it's second nature, so that's... that's... then you can... then they come out... come out well.

[Q] How do you practise as an artist?

Well, doing it a lot. And... and, you know, new materials, new... new problems, new finishes, new places to work with, new lifting gear, I mean, you know. Some very practical, down to earth things and some... some very... and I'm sure that, you know... where the walls are, how big the space you work in, the... you know... Johnny who's working with you. I mean all these things are influencing you and... and changing your touch and... and making you see a little differently. ‘So, okay, let's try it a different way. We've had the sculpture like this while it was before and, now it's made, when you put it together again, let's put it up in a different place.’ So we... we find ourselves focusing on a different side, or we find ourselves seeing it a little differently, and see whether it works then, you know, all that stuff.