Bear/ Oxidised Original Artwork

The copper doesn't ask permission to change. Over weeks and months, the oxidation creeps across the surface, creating patterns that can't be planned or controlled. This bear emerges from that chaos — collaged illustration meeting metal, varnish catching light where the patina shifts from green to brown to something entirely its own.

This isn't printmaking as most people know it. No paper. No press. Just copper sheet, oxidising agents, and twenty years of screen printing knowledge bent into something different. The bear imagery arrives through collage — fragments built up, then sealed under varnish that protects without hiding. The background continues its slow transformation beneath.

Copper has been oxidising since humans first worked with it. The Statue of Liberty took thirty years to turn green. Ancient bronze vessels develop their own patina signatures over centuries. This piece works on the same principle but faster — controlled corrosion that creates unrepeatable surface textures. No two pieces could ever look identical, even if you tried to make them.

The bear itself comes from collaged elements — pieces selected, positioned, then locked in place with screen-printed varnish. It's illustration meeting chemistry. The organic shapes of the oxidation play against the deliberate placement of the imagery. Background and foreground blur together in ways that flat printing could never achieve.

At 115 x 205mm, it's small-format work. The kind of thing that rewards close inspection. Details emerge as the light changes. The patina reveals new colours. The varnish catches reflections. It's intimate scale work that fits in your hand but changes as you look.

This is original artwork in the truest sense — one-off, unrepeatable, signed on the reverse. Not a limited edition. Not a reproduction. The only one that will ever exist. For collectors who want something that couldn't come from anywhere else, made by someone who's spent two decades learning printmaking just to break all the rules.