"Although primarily a sculptor, drawings form the other half of my working life.

They are not preliminary studies for sculpture but related explorations freed from many of the laws of physics that a sculptor must obey. They are close to my heart, stand as works in their own right and have never before been shown as a group in London.

In my studio I have two shelves of notebooks covering forty years. They contain ideas for possible sculpture and drawings, as well as sketches of things and places seen, ideas never made concrete, lists, measurements, details of music heard, evocative phrases.

They are in pencil and stand for so many different things: a first draft of a charcoal drawing, a diagram of such a drawing if made, a thought for a large steel sculpture and a rendering of it if realised, with weights and dimensions, a view of a landscape or a collection of pots and pans in a long, high window.

Drawing is seeing, thinking, finding, recording, connecting, stilling and distilling. I believe early experience of carving in stone influenced my way of seeing and my way of making drawings and sculpture. A chisel cut will at one and the same time, make a mark in space, an edge and a shadow.

The experience has resulted in a preoccupation with linearity, precision, light and shadow and spatial interval. It has also resulted in a love for clear, uncluttered, well-lit and edgy landscapes."

Nigel Hall, May 2002