NEBULA I

or That you and the milky carpet of stars were wrought by the same eternal hand, and that we too can breathe the clay to life in turn.

Made from polyurethane foam, kaolin, natural and air dry clays, gesso, acrylic, aerosol, epoxy resin, ultra-light modelling paste, glitter, and uv archival spray varnish on stretched canvas.

This series grew out of a research impulse to unite two radically different material technologies: ceramics and plastics. Each painting began as a drawing on canvas made with expanding polyurethane foam, creating a lightweight 3D skeleton that was primed and progressively buried beneath dozens of layers of handmade ceramic paint. I combined kaolin—the mineral from which porcelain is made—with clay slip, gesso and acrylic, sealing approximately every fifth layer with resin. A nod to Eric Cameron’s repeated entombment of objects in gesso, I wanted accumulation itself to become the aesthetic. Repeated coating gradually softened and obscured the original geometry, while ultra-light modelling paste allowed the surfaces to be further built out and modulated. Negative space was carved back with aerosols and glitter spray, creating searing contrasts between form and void. The resulting objects sit somewhere between painting, sculpture and ceramic: industrial polymers entombed within a mineral skin that approaches the hardness of porcelain without ever having to enter a kiln. A space-age ceramic that need never be fired, they combine some of our most ancient and novel material technologies.

Offical Selection, Cosmoscow 2026.
4' x 4'