New Collection by Samuel Collins

Artist Statement: Making art provides time for my hands to catch up with my thoughts. I can often be impatient, but this becomes entirely irrelevant when carving stone: they have lived for millenia, and demand your time and concerted effort. I have felt the pull of stone since before I learned how to carve. I would hike to remote tors and stone circles in Dartmoor, or collect small shards of flint from farmers’ fields in Suffolk. There is a primaeval appeal to stone, like the irresistible magnetism of an open fire.

While I work, I tune myself to a sense of mass and space, and how subtle shifts in position can transform the way forms relate to one another. I stay sensitive to a sense of memory and history in the material, and consider how countless generations of ancestors have interacted with the same land, soil and stone, both for survival and for spiritual fulfilment.

These new works are made from Spanish alabaster, rejected cathedral masonry, former column sections, and large end slabs from the Isle of Purbeck – hand sourced and split in my studio. Some pieces are reconfigured to become a single structure, while others are created in isolation. The resulting works can appear as if they were found objects, yet upon closer inspection reveal the processes of carving, shaping and sanding that have revealed their forms, while retaining the story of the stones in their aged, weathered surface.