The studio’s been a bit of a tempest lately. I’ve been Pollocking – flinging, dripping, pouring and splashing paint with wild abandon. It’s my ode to Jackson Pollock (Jack the Dripper, affectionately), but with a distinctly ominous climate change catastrophe twist.

Manmade Dryas is a new series drawing a parallel between the geological period known as the Younger Dryas and the catastrophic impact of climate change today. The Younger Dryas—roughly 12,900 to 11,700 years ago—was marked by sudden climatic upheaval: floods, fires, volcanic activity, and mass extinctions that reshaped the planet. But this time, the catastrophe is an entirely manmade disaster.

These works are large, oil-based, and layered with contrast. Bright reds, oranges, and yellows blaze across the surface – fires that consume land and cityscapes. Black and charcoal tones provide structure, like scorched scaffolding. Luminous blues and greens swirl through the chaos in tsunamic waves, spray, and smoke. It’s a visual reckoning: fire and flood, beauty and collapse.

On top of this catastrophe of paint, I’ve been printing with Indian block stamps, their delicate filigree suggesting flames and blackened foliage. And I’ve returned to the stylised wave patterns of Japanese kimono painting, drawn to their grace and precision to decorate my wild, towering waves. I’m trying to create a tension between the beautiful and the terrible, layered and complex.

It mirrors something familiar: our horror and fascination with natural disasters. Volcano tourism. Endless reels of landslides, tornadoes, tsunamis. I’m not sure where these catastrophes are headed, but I’m toying with some ideas, and I think they are the sort of paintings that have BIG IDEAS of their own. They’re still evolving. I’ll share more once the sparks settle.