It’s an overwhelming feeling, making something using your own means and ideas, something that exists right in front of you. It’s like breathing life into a lump of clay, almost like being the Pygmalion of old. After finishing secondary school, I sat down beneath the chestnut tree in front of the school and made my decision to waste my youth on art—and the rest of my life, too. I had to battle my way there, though. It wasn’t totally clear from the start that I would become an artist. I would’ve also liked to have pursued my obsession with working with my hands by using my leptosomatic sensitivities as a dentist; or else put my intellectual exhibitionism on display as a journalist. But I’d already tasted blood elsewhere, had the luck to be able to try my hand both in and out of school at making things with soapstone, clay, and ink; becoming an artist was probably the more socially acceptable choice.