Five thousand people entered Channel Five's national art competition in 2004. I was one of only 100 selected for the regional heats where I exhibited my "Emerge-re-emerge" Sculpture.
From here I was one of only 40 artists to make it through to the National Heat, which was held at the Baltic Gallery in Newcastle.
The Big Art Challenge judging panel comprised critic, Brian Sewell; designer, Wayne Hemingway; and artist, Jane Wilson.
"In terms of what you've managed to do I think it's astonishing. It's actually difficult for people who know absolutely nothing about the work of a sculptor to understand. In fact, I don't think that they ever could contemplate the difficulty of having something in your minds eye, selecting a piece of stone and then translating what is here to form something within the block."
"This is really interesting because this is such an alien material. It is intellectually, physically, aesthetically an entirely different business." -- Brian Sewell
"Personally I think it [Emerge-re-emerge] is really well finished and very skillfully done. It felt a bit like a V&A museum piece." -- Wayne Hemingway