Claw/ Oxidised Original Artwork

Copper changes. Always has, always will. You can't stop it, you can't predict exactly how it'll turn out. That's the point.

This started as a flat sheet of copper, put through the press like paper but with ten times the resistance. The oxidation process began immediately — air, moisture, time doing what they do. The patina shifts from bright copper through browns and greens, settling into something that looks like it's been buried and dug up again.

The claw came after. Printed collage elements built up in layers, then sealed under varnish. Not decoration — integration. The imagery works with the oxidation, not against it. Abstract forms that could be talons, could be reaching fingers, could be the curve of a branch worn smooth by weather.

This is what happens when you take screen printing off paper and onto metal. The process fights back. The copper dictates terms. You're collaborating with chemistry, with time, with materials that have their own agenda. Every piece oxidises differently — temperature, humidity, the trace oils from handling. No two are identical because no two can be.

One-off means one-off. 115x205mm of copper that's been through the press, been worked, been left to do what copper does. The patina will continue to shift, slowly, over years. It's not finished — it's just paused.

Twenty years of screen printing led to this moment of tearing it apart. Taking the discipline learned at Camberwell and pushing it somewhere it doesn't want to go. The copper resists the ink, the oxidation fights the varnish, the whole thing wants to curl and warp. Making it work requires force, timing, and acceptance that some things are beyond control.

Signed on the back because signing the front would be missing the point. Shipped in archival tissue because copper deserves care, even when it's been deliberately distressed.

This is for people who understand that the best work happens when you stop trying to control every variable. When you let the materials have their say.