The way I work: I use the welding method and it’s perhaps a more unusual method because I mainly use an arc or electric welder. I use oxyacetylene equipment for cutting my metal and I use sheet steel for my constructions or my sculptures, but I join them together with an arc welder. Well, arc welding is one of the newer types of welding. It’s a rather crude tool because it shows a very heavy texture through the welding mark, you can’t weld very light metal with this method, you have to use fairly heavy sheet or plate, and that requires a certain way of thinking. Well, what fascinates me about this is the sheer flatness and perhaps unattractiveness of the material; that to me is a challenge.
You may wonder why I started on this, and perhaps one of the reasons is to get away from the tradition that I have been born into, and that my background has forced me into, and I found by changing to a material that is so different and so new I could start finding my own way.
Now, my main aim in this is to use these flat shapes of steel and create something three-dimensional, almost architectural, something in the round, which is not always a very easy task, but to me it is a great challenge and one of the main aims in my work, thus expressing certain ideas I have.
My ideas come from the life around me and within me. I cannot pin one particular aspect down, but all I’m trying to do is express those ideas, the impressions I have and the life I live in a certain material – steel – and to be true to that material.
