ASH #3 (2026) 'Carbon Composition'

I'm continueing to experiment with metallic acrylics, gilding waxes and gold foils in the progression of this edition. I’m experimenting with ways of bringing a sense of glow and heat into the paintings, while developing abstract elements and visual components that I can evolve and carry through all eight pieces.

'Carbon Composition' explores - as do many of the paintings in the edition -  what might be left behind. The intense heat of uncontrolled fire can reduce almost everything to its most basic elements, leaving little more than carbon, ash and the raw material from which nature can begin again.

As with the rest of the ASH edition, the subject is really the starting point rather than the message. I’m interested in what fire gives me as an artist: heat, light, texture, destruction, transformation and the possibility of renewal. The narrative sits somewhere beneath the surface, but the paintings themselves are where the story is told.