I very rarely sketch out anything ahead of time; I choose a more intuitive route of finding my way through it as I go. Sometimes I spend as much as nine months working on a large piece so I'm always staggering multiple projects – some of them in other materials – so that I can allow some of the pieces more time to gestate while others might be finished rapidly.

Sometimes I start with a stone, or an object from an antique store or something I picked up as the initial inspiration and I develop it as a sculpture in its own right. It may or may not grow to have other parts or elements.

There is almost always a story to tell, or an impression or a feeling I have whether it be the instigator of a new piece or it evolves later as I am creating. I am inspired by beauty, by ugliness, by travel, by life in a third world country. By anything and everything that I absorb. My work is very personal – it comes from my own vision so I almost never do commission work. I am an artist, not after all a psychic.

– Lisa Simms