“I spent the winter in Andalucia, Spain, doing charcoal drawings. I had been producing miniature doodles in biro for years; I wanted to reproduce them in a format that was more easy to view/exhibit.

My main sculptural project this year was “The Sweet Spot”; an oak throne carved from one piece of tree trunk, from a tree that was over 200 years old, from the Wiston Estate in West Sussex. The piece was made to be exhibited at Bentley Wood Fair in September, where it is still on display. It took ~ 6 weeks to complete, and involved an initial roughing out with a chainsaw, a lot of shaping using an angle grinder/arbortech & a little fine finishing with hand tools (rasps, surforms & gouges). It is 1.8m tall & still weighs over 1.25 tonnes. It is called “The Sweet Spot” because of the peculiar acoustics whenever anyone sits in it & speaks.”