Photo Collage, Acrylic and Resin on Wood Panel | 12×12 inches | 1⅞" Deep | 2023 | Nudibranch Series
Once upon a time, in a kingdom at the bottom of the ocean, the most famous mushroom in the world threw a party.
The fly agaric — Amanita muscaria — has been the centrepiece of human imagination for as long as humans have had imagination. It appears in fairy tales and shamanic rituals, in Alice's Wonderland and ancient cave paintings, in the dreams of children and the ceremonies of cultures separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years. It is the mushroom. The original. The one that, when you draw a mushroom without thinking, your hand produces automatically — red cap, white spots, the particular confident curve of something that knows exactly what it is and has always known.
Here it sits at the centre of Nudi Toad Spike like a king on a throne. Like the still point of a turning world. Like the host of the most extraordinary party the ocean floor has ever seen.
And what guests.
Circling the toadstool in every direction, the nudibranchs have arrived in their absolute finest. A long pink and yellow aeolid sweeps across the upper left like a feather boa, its cerata trailing behind it with the casual elegance of someone who has never once doubted their outfit. Three extraordinary chromodoris nudibranchs cluster around the mushroom's cap in blue and orange and yellow polka dots — the ocean's answer to confetti, to celebration, to the particular joy of pattern repeated perfectly across a living surface. A yellow spiky nudibranch blazes in the lower left, its surface covered in precisely arranged yellow tubercles that catch the light like a living chandelier. Two flame-coloured aeolids burn in the lower right and upper right, their orange and yellow cerata radiating outward like sunbursts, like fireworks, like the mushroom's own warmth reflected back in living colour. A magenta and blue nudibranch adds the coolest, most jewel-like note to the lower left — the one moment of purple in a composition that burns red and orange and yellow, the shadow that makes the fire more bright.
And the resin over all of it — that high-gloss surface that turns the panel into something between an aquarium and a jewel box, that creates the particular quality of depth and magnification that makes every creature appear to float in their own private ocean, preserved at the exact moment of their maximum magnificence.
This is the Nudibranch series at its most joyful, most mythological, most unapologetically excessive. A fairy tale and a nature documentary and a fever dream, all at once, in twelve square inches of resin and paint and paper and wonder.
✦ Original, one-of-a-kind work ✦ Photo collage, acrylic and resin on wood panel ✦ 12 × 12 inches | 1⅞" deep ✦ Unframed — deep cradled panel, ready to hang ✦ 2023 ✦ Part of the Nudibranch series ✦ Free worldwide shipping ✦ $1,500
The most famous mushroom in the world. The most extraordinary creatures in the ocean. One party.
Photo Collage, Acrylic and Resin on Wood Panel | 12×12 inches | 1⅞" Deep | 2023 | Nudibranch Series
Once upon a time, in a kingdom at the bottom of the ocean, the most famous mushroom in the world threw a party.
The fly agaric — Amanita muscaria — has been the centrepiece of human imagination for as long as humans have had imagination. It appears in fairy tales and shamanic rituals, in Alice's Wonderland and ancient cave paintings, in the dreams of children and the ceremonies of cultures separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years. It is the mushroom. The original. The one that, when you draw a mushroom without thinking, your hand produces automatically — red cap, white spots, the particular confident curve of something that knows exactly what it is and has always known.
Here it sits at the centre of Nudi Toad Spike like a king on a throne. Like the still point of a turning world. Like the host of the most extraordinary party the ocean floor has ever seen.
And what guests.
Circling the toadstool in every direction, the nudibranchs have arrived in their absolute finest. A long pink and yellow aeolid sweeps across the upper left like a feather boa, its cerata trailing behind it with the casual elegance of someone who has never once doubted their outfit. Three extraordinary chromodoris nudibranchs cluster around the mushroom's cap in blue and orange and yellow polka dots — the ocean's answer to confetti, to celebration, to the particular joy of pattern repeated perfectly across a living surface. A yellow spiky nudibranch blazes in the lower left, its surface covered in precisely arranged yellow tubercles that catch the light like a living chandelier. Two flame-coloured aeolids burn in the lower right and upper right, their orange and yellow cerata radiating outward like sunbursts, like fireworks, like the mushroom's own warmth reflected back in living colour. A magenta and blue nudibranch adds the coolest, most jewel-like note to the lower left — the one moment of purple in a composition that burns red and orange and yellow, the shadow that makes the fire more bright.
And the resin over all of it — that high-gloss surface that turns the panel into something between an aquarium and a jewel box, that creates the particular quality of depth and magnification that makes every creature appear to float in their own private ocean, preserved at the exact moment of their maximum magnificence.
This is the Nudibranch series at its most joyful, most mythological, most unapologetically excessive. A fairy tale and a nature documentary and a fever dream, all at once, in twelve square inches of resin and paint and paper and wonder.
✦ Original, one-of-a-kind work ✦ Photo collage, acrylic and resin on wood panel ✦ 12 × 12 inches | 1⅞" deep ✦ Unframed — deep cradled panel, ready to hang ✦ 2023 ✦ Part of the Nudibranch series ✦ Free worldwide shipping ✦ $1,500
The most famous mushroom in the world. The most extraordinary creatures in the ocean. One party.
