Original artwork description:

This painting was inspired by a book and a museum visit.

The book was Gaspard Koenig's 'Humus', which focuses on man's relationship with nature through two students who bond over a shared interest in earthworms. It seemed to express things that I've been addressing in my paintings for years.

The museum was the musée des arts et metiers in Paris, which houses a huge collection of old scientific instruments and inventions. It made me think about the enormous efforts that mankind has gone to over centuries to try to understand and categorise the world through measurement.

In this painting, however, the toad's formlessness defies measurement and represents the futility of trying to master nature. It's mild interest in the fly buzzing about its head contrasts with its complete indifference to the instruments of measurement buried beneath it, being pulled down into the soil by the earthworms.

The painting is in handmade egg tempera paint and traditional watergilding on a gessoed wooden panel. It is in a fixed wooden frame and measures 50cm x 17cm x 2cm in the frame. It is signed and dated on the reverse and has a picture cord attached so that it is ready to hang.

Materials used:

Pigments ground in egg yolk, wood, gesso, gold leaf

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