Every sculpture begins with a decision.
Not the decision of what to make, but the decision to begin without knowing exactly where the wood will lead.
We are taught to begin with certainty. I begin with curiosity.
My work has never followed that path. I do not begin with a finished image waiting inside the wood.
I begin with a decision to take the next step.
Every cut removes something forever.
The wood changes.
The light changes.
The possibilities change.
There is no undo button.
Every decision quietly shapes the next one. After each cut, I stop.
I walk around the sculpture. I look again. Sometimes I see the next movement immediately. Sometimes I put the tools away and return the following day.
I have learned not to trust a decision simply because it came first. I trust the one that still feels right after silence.
Looking back, I realise that none of my sculptures has ever begun with one great idea.
They emerge through countless quiet decisions, each one changing what becomes possible next.
Most of those decisions will never be seen. No one will know how many times I turned the wood before removing one more piece.
No one will see the moments when I decided to wait rather than carve.
Yet those invisible decisions shape everything that eventually becomes visible.
Perhaps that is why none of my sculptures can ever be repeated.
Not because I do not remember how they were made.
But because I could never make exactly the same hundreds of decisions again.
This reflection emerged while working on Confluence.
