The Crackle Collection: texture, accident and what breaks beautifully
The Crackle Collection began with listening. After time in Sussex gardens and woods, I started paying attention to small, ordinary sounds: birds calling across branches, twigs snapping underfoot, the dry rustle of seed heads, the soft crack of bark. Those listening exercises turned my focus from sea to trees, and let the woodland lead the work.
Detail of In-between. 2024.
Here, mark making and colour take centre stage. Instead of waves and horizons, the pieces lean into verticals, clusters and broken lines, in woodland tones of deep browns, muted greens and greys, with the occasional burst of light, like sun on bark.
The crackle itself comes from layered media that shrink and dry at different rates, so the top layers split and reveal what lies beneath. In some pieces heat speeds the fissures along; in others it’s simply time. I set up the conditions, then let go. Too much control and the surface feels dead, too much chaos and it loses coherence. The crackle lives in between, a collaboration between me and the material. Some pieces are sanded back, stitched into, or marked along their fault lines. Some include real wood, so the work carries a little of the forest’s weight and grain.
Cracked. 2024. Acrylic, oil pastel, mixed media
These pieces invite touch. Micro-fractures run across the surface like dried riverbeds, and tiny islands of colour lift and separate. That pull is deliberate.
Ultimately, this collection is about honouring what doesn’t stay pristine: bark, paint, paper, and our own lives. Fracture can be beautiful, and texture born of stress and exposure can carry meaning rather than damage.
Detail of Scorched Tryptic
This body of work is still growing, with significant new pieces on the way. And since heat has been playing a part in how these surfaces break, the next works turn the temperature up considerably. Scorching hot ones to follow. Watch this space.
Work in Process.