As a child, in bed in my child's bedroom, I would watch the specks of dust twirling slowly through the darkness, specks of light floating on the invisible sunbeam that filtered thrugh the half-closed shutters. Later, in Provence, I came to know and love the blends and contrasts of light and shade amongst the clear rocky masses, the darkening sweep ot the trees bending in the harsh wind. The gentle feel of winter sun on my face, a softness reminiscent of the firts days of creation. The beauty of the human form in all its aspects, enhanced by the light as it touches here and there, illuminating, casting shadows, reflections. Forms ans shapes revealing this light in turn, revealing their softness under one's touch. This is the very essence of scultpure, its secret: to toake hold of the basic material and bring the form into being, give it its corporality, guide it forth, let it become itself in one's hands. Birth and creation.

If I intervene in things it is definitely not so as to deprive them of something or emphasise their special quality. I simply try to go back to their initial darkness, their original state of nakedness. I instil in them a desire for light, a curiosity about shade, an urgent wish to construct. What matters is creating a new love from beings and objects that until that moment were without feeling. Georges Braque
(translation Delia Morris)

Leave it to the words that come from my mouth
And the currents of tenderness that flow from my hands
And the fruition of all my fertile loves ;
Leave it to my writing and my work -

Leave it to my speech and to my joys as a man,
Their attraction forever independent of myself,
Their escape from my own eyes easy,
Lovely, their flight from my grasp,

Released from time, in their eternal essences;
They are the sparks of the word that reaches its true mark,
Exact in expression, apt in response,

They are the work that involves me completely
Yet whose existence I feel owes so much to chance,
Abundance, festivity, the grace of invitation;

They are the sculpture I dare to sign
Having so long imagined and worked at it,
Astonished still by the happy circumstance of its arrival,
Its unpredictable breathing presence.

"Now my charms are all o'erthrown
And what strength I have's my own" -

In life's ever-renewed invitation,
Free, disarmed, my attention is
To what's here, now,
The eternal present, flowing between my fingers.