"Full marks to those people who ask me to make something for them. Because they don't know what they're going to get and neither do I.
I think that's really nice in a way. There's this completely blank piece of paper starting at you and daring you to make a mark on it and so something and then it goes from there into living metal.
Most of the work is very contemporary. Design and make for specific sites from a variety of visual sources.
I remember one occasion I was designing a chandelier for a barrister's chambers in London and I was a bit stumped for an idea, so I drew round a masking tape and something came from that which was actually quite effective.
More recently I was doing another chandelier by coincidence for a house near Llanidloes and I was inspired by a painting in the Tate gallery by a French surrealist and I took it from there.
I have worked in bronze and brass previously and also in silver and gold but for the most part in architectural metalwork - forged steel.
I can't really afford my own work, that's the problem with artists really; they either wind up with quite a lot of it because they can't sell it but not because they can afford it!
Essentially decorative blacksmithing is very conservative, pushing it in different directions - it's quite difficult to be recognised I think.
I like the heat of it and I like the way it moves under the hammer and I think that's quite nice, and under the hammer you really can move a lot of metal in a short space of time.
It's actually quite a powerful tool to be able to do those things with such an intractable medium.
I'd actually like the opportunity to develop my own again which I haven't done for some years.
We shall see."
