I just returned to London after a liason with my collaborator artist Megan Segre. We spent a busy week at the Casa Regis art residency in North Italy in the foothills of the Alps.

Megan and I decided to tackle this project and translate this period in English history, where coal was the constant source of heat delivered to house cellars in London by way of these holes in the pavement outside the home concealed by cleverly designed cast-iron covers.

Megan primarily works with textiles and clay while my work will be mixed media which i manipulate to refer to geology and the source of coal in the earth while referencing it’s current position as a damaging fossil fuel.

My aim is to Juxtapose visual language about a wonder of nature as a non-renewable heat source with a Victorian design ethic and it’s journey into demise as a toxic pollutant.

Plant forms from The carboniferous period 30×20” Saunders Waterford paper 425 gsm

The source of coal (and oil)lies in the Carboniferous period.

Giant botanical and amphibian life grew in swampy areas in an atmosphere of high oxygen. Then a rapid change happened to the planet causing all vegetation to die. Coal formed over millions of years through a process called coalification, where ancient plant matter was buried, compressed, and geo-thermally heated underground.