Mirror art. Clipped ring. 20x35x35cm This version: July 2026
I’ve been using mirrors to create art for many years. This example uses the addition of a relatively recent addition to my repertoire: document clips.
The document clips form a semicircle that rests on the surface of the mirror, with the reflection of the semicircle creating the illusion of a complete circle of clips.
The work has been placed outdoors so that the mirror reflects the sky, which creates the illusion that the (illusory) ring of documents clips is floating in the sky. The reflection of the sky in the mirror generates a strange disorientation in its own right – a disorientation that is amplified by the ring of clips that seems to be suspended at the threshold that separates the reflected sky from the real world.
I created my first work that included a ‘sky mirror’ in 1969.
The semicircle of document clips and the sky reflected in the mirror.
Unlike most of the posts on this site this one has more to do with someone else’s art (In this case Anish Kapoor).
I have a problem with Vantablack (and it’s not the usual one about the fact that Anish Kapoor won’t let anyone else use it).
The defining property of Vantablack is that it’s so black that it absorbs almost all of the light that falls on it. This means that if you were to coat an object with Vantablack you literally wouldn’t be able to see the object (because it isn’t reflecting any light). You literally see a black space. You see nothing. It’s all very philosophically fascinating.
I recently went to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London where there is a room with half a dozen Vantablack themed artworks on display. I gazed at them all in turn and contemplated the void within each of them, with each artwork being fascinating in its own right.
However, once you’ve seen one incomprehensible black void you’ve seen them all.
Staring at things that you can’t see has got its limits when it comes to attention-holding.
Not being able to see Vantablack is the pigment’s strength, but it’s also it’s weakness. Vantablack is so good at doing what it does that it doesn’t give you any chance to work out what it is that it’s doing.
One work in the show at the Hayward featured a Vantablack sphere attached to a Vantablack surface (see the video below). This particular work was fascinating partly because by walking around it you could see what you were looking at from some angles (where the sphere was silhouetted against the gallery wall) while from other angles you literally couldn’t see what you were looking at because the sphere was in front of the Vantablack background and all that could be seen was total blackness.
Others of the Vantablack works in the show however gave no clue as to their construction even when you walked around them and peered into their unfathomable blackness. This was fascinating and mysterious in itself of course, but also more than a little frustrating.
If you want to see art as a metaphor then I think Vantablack art may be a metaphor for the fascinating, mysterious and frustrating way that we as humans attempt to look into the void and try to grasp the nature and meaning of existence, only to see that we can’t make anything out at all.
But once you’ve done that while looking at one piece of work, you don’t particularly want to do exactly the same thing when you move on to the next piece which seems to be telling you exactly the same thing but this time via a black square on the wall rather than a black circle on the ground.
I found myself staring at the just-mentioned Vantablack circle on the floor of the gallery, pictured above. Was it a black circle painted directly onto the gallery floor? It certainly looked a bit like a rug. Or was it a hole reaching down to the centre of the Earth? The exhibit was on the ground floor of the gallery so a hole going down at least into the basement wasn’t inconceivable. With Vantablack a flat surface and a twenty foot deep hole in the ground both look exactly the same because, as I mentioned, you literally can’t see the thing that you’re looking at.
I could imagine some people being tempted to throw an object onto the black circle on the floor just to see what happened.
Thinking around this idea I decided that if I got my hands on some Vantablack (fat chance) I’d probably deliberately place visible objects on the Vantablack surfaces in order to create something more than just a blank black void. For instance with a Vantablack hole in the ground I’d probably place an object on the bottom of the hole. I’d probably place it so that it could only be seen from one direction, meaning that from other directions you couldn’t tell whether the Vantablack hole was in fact a hole or whether it was a flat surface.
I’ve done a few ‘black hole’ artworks of my own over the past decade or so (search ‘black hole’ in the search box).
Below is a photo of an idea that I had some time ago, showing a room with a checkered tiled floor in which some of the black tiles are actually replaced by holes (the photo’s a visualisation, not an actual artwork). In this version in the visualisation I’ve placed objects in some of the holes while others are black voids. I’ve deliberately adjusted the lighting to make the holes obvious for explanatory purposes.
I’m sure that Anish Kapoor must have thought about this sort of thing himself and that he decided not to pursue it, perhaps because it violates a metaphor or because it says something that he doesn’t particularly want to say.
A kinetic art work in the form of a mobile composed of spheres with wings. The wings are in the form of hands. In this video the mobile is positioned so that it is viewed against the sunset.
In this setting, with this lighting, the objects on the mobile resemble wheeling birds or similar flying creatures gathering at sunset and preparing for the night ahead.
The sound is the actual location soundtrack of birds’ evening chorus.
The work was originally created for my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens near Penzance in Cornwall in 2022. This video was taken in Zennor, Cornwall in May 2026.
The photograph below shows some of the winged creatures indoors.
Through the process of Darwinian evolution the wings of birds and bats (but not of insects) evolved from what were originally hands or claws, so the use of hands as wings in this artwork isn’t all that far-fetched.
Photograph of hob cleaner sprayed onto a kitchen hob
Photograph. 31st May 2026
A photograph of the aesthetic effect of hob cleaning detergent sprayed onto a kitchen hob.
This photograph shows how aesthetically pleasing and significant images can be found in unlikely contexts.
To me the effect of the light catching the detergent on the dark surface of the hob evokes something cosmic, with the points of light resembling stars and the circles of the hob rings being some other cosmic phenomenon. The fact that the cosmic is being seen in the mundane is very appealing. In many ways the surface of a kitchen hob is as interesting (or possibly more interesting) as a vast panorama of stars in deep space. After all, there are uncountable billions of stars in the universe, but the number of kitchen hobs is strictly limited (even if there are other kitchen hobs on other planets).
Hammers are designed to strike blows. By tying several of them together they lose this ability, being rended impotent.
It invites interpretation as some sort of metaphor. The work was created largely because the components were to hand, with the composition coming together spontaneously and subconsciously. That doesn’t mean that there are no underlying meanings to the work of course – after all, why did I choose to pick up a few hammers rather than a few bottles of washing-up liquid?
This work was created for and was first exhibited in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens near Penzance in 2016.
It’s designed to hang on a wall, however in the image here it is on a sheet of plastic on the studio floor because I like the effect.
An assemblage composed of a ceramic vessel and a bicycle saddle. The saddle is attached to a bicycle seat pillar which is inserted into the narrow neck of the vessel. The vessel is placed on a tall stool.
The zoomorphic effect of the assemblage is to suggest some sort of creature, possibly a bird. The saddle resembles a head and the ceramic vessel a body. The stool may be a perch for a bird or even legs.
My work on show in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026.
A sculpture composed of a sequence of Polo mints on a wooden base.
The Polo mints are arranged in pairs, with the two mints in each pair interlocked, with each mint passing through the hole in the other.
The mints are real Polo mints.
Polo mints are very sculptural in their own right, especially with the excellent typography of the word Polo in relief on them. The mints were originally produced in 1948 by Rowntree in the UK and were based on the design of the US confectionary Life Savers (which Rowntree previously produced in the UK under license).
The use of confectionary or other types of food in contemporary art is often a comment on consumerism. I don’t think that that applies in this case. Here I think that the prime subject of the work in the transformation on the confectionary into a sculptural form.
The interlinked Polo mints are attached to a wooden base.
The interconnected mints may be interpreted in a number of ways.
A single pair of interlinked mints can be thought of as having romantic connotations. They can be seen as being similar to a pair of interlocked wedding rings (the romantic connotations of the mints came to me before I realised that the same is sometimes done with wedding rings).
The linked mints also suggest to me some sort of machine, with the vertical mints possibly being wheels. They also have the suggestion of interconnected cogs or machine parts, which reinforces the machine connection.
The sketch shows a bell. Inside the bell, in the place where the clapper should be, is a hanging man.
The image came to me spontaneously while I was looking at a bell. I think that part of the idea may be that the bell marks out time, announcing the hours,and therefore marks out life.
Bells are also tolled to mark out death.
The idea of people replacing the clappers in bells has since been used in the work SeawardVenice by Florentino Holzinger in the Austrian pavilion in the 2026 Venice Biannale. Holzinger’s work features real people dangling upside down in real bells.
There is a small sculptural version of my bell that features a real bell and a model of a person.
Digital painting (Procreate on iPad). 29th March 2026
A digital painting created on my iPad on a recent visit to Kew Gardens.
Most of the art that I create is the product of my imagination rather than of what I can see in front of me, however I’ve always created sketches of the world around me, usually in sketchbooks.
The iPad, or any tablet, is a great tool for sketching. It’s very convenient, especially if you work in colour as you don’t have to carry a case full of colours with you.
I created this image soon after reading an article about a David Hockney exhibition – a Year in Normandie – which is currently on at the Serpentine Gallery. I obviously had Hockney in mind when I created this image.
Sketch using Procreate on an iPad. 24th October 2025
One of the great things about iPads and tablets in general is that you can just do a drawing at any time, anywhere. Sketchbooks are pretty good for that too, but things get complicated if you want to use colour.
This is a sketch I drew idly, with nothing specific in mind. Obviously it contains a number of themes and tropes that recur in my work; in fact now that I look at it it’s nothing but themes and tropes.
These tropes include the way that the subject of the sketch is floating just above the ground and the fact that the subject is in the form of what may be a hollow container such as a seed pod or a hollow exoskeleton from which a head and limbs emerge. Here the limbs are clutching a spherical object of indeterminate origin.
This work was shown in Wells Cathedral at the Wells Art Contemporary exhibition 2025.
A pen and ink drawing of a woman walking on stilts that have wheels to help them to move along. The woman seems to be walking in the air for some reason. I’m not quite sure how she does it.
The pen and ink drawing is done using a traditional dip pen on a sheet of paper to which a watercolour wash had been applied. The wash was applied in several layers, the first of which was composed of Daniel Smith Lunar Black watercolour which was specifically chosen because it can create pronounced granulation effects, as shown in the images below.
The drawing was executed with a traditional dip pen.
A detail of the work showing the granulation in the Daniel Smith Lunar Black in the watercolour wash.
Contemporary sculpture composed of found objects, wooden hemispheres and card.
Idol. 25x10x8cm. September 2025
A sculpture created from two hammerheads, two ball bearings, six wooden hemispheres and length of card. The parts are held together by magnets.
The central components of this work are two hammerheads – artefacts that have been recurring features of my work for many years, usually in the form of drawings and more recently in the form of small scale sculptural work, The hammerheads are usually, but not always, used to represent the heads of people or animals.
A close-up of the surface of an artwork from my series featuring protruding and recessed hemispheres in flat surfaces.
This particular artwork is a wall hung sculpture filmed while lying horizontally. The interesting light effects are created by sunlight passing through trees outside the window. The texture of the artwork is created by mixing sand with gesso.
Exhibited in Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, July – August 2025
The painting depicts one of the aspects of power relationships.
It shows two people on stilts – one on tall stilts and one on shorter stilts. The tall stilts symbolise greater power. The person on the shorter stilts is sawing through one of the tall stilts. This symbolises the deposing of the powerful person on the tall stilts. Significantly, it is the fact that the stilts are so tall that makes them vulnerable to being sabotaged.
The work can be seen as a metaphor for one of the relationships between the powerful and the less powerful.
Exhibited at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, July and August 2025.
A work in my Black Whole series.
The works feature a hemispherical form protruding from the plane of the work and an equal and opposite hemispherical form receding into it.
The work was concieved partly as a visualisation of the positive and negative forces that underlie the physical structure of the universe. The concept is that at the most fundamental level of physical reality nothing exists except what can be thought of metaphorically as a flat featureless plane or surface. This featureless plane represents the existence of “nothingness” and is represented in the artwork by the flat surface of the work. A single disturbance to this plane creates a paired bulge and depression (just as a single wave creates a peak and a trough), represented in the work by the raised hemisphere and the recessed hemisphere.
The bulge and the depression are equal and opposite, so they can be thought of as cancelling each other out. As a result they add nothing to the “energy” at this fundamental level of reality. The fundamental plane is still. on average, flat. So, although something exists (in the form of the bulge and the depression), on average nothing still exists. The creation of ‘something’ does not alter the existence of nothing.
Nothing exists.
The work is painted very matt black to allude to the existence of nothing.
The generation of something from (almost) nothing.
Rows of dots interacting to generate circles. Digital This version: June 2025
This image is composed of multiple identical rows of dots with the rows arranged at regular angles to each other and with regular spacing. An animation showing the positioning of the rows of dots can be se
The circles in the image are formed as the result of the interaction between the separate rows of dots. There are no circles in the underlying components of the image. An idea of the underlying rows of dots in the image can be found by looking at the corners of the image where the number of rows is fewer.
I’ve produced several images of this type over the years since about 2017.
The work is linked to my interest in the scientific principles concerning the generation of complexity in the universe from simpler forms. Ultimately this involves trying to comprehend the generation of the most basic entities in the universe from something that’s just one step removed from nothing. It’s about the generation of something from nothing.
The work can be seen as a metaphor for the generation of complexity is any area of existence. It demonstrates the way that as soon as two entities interact (in this case rows of dots) something more complicated results.
Circles generated from overlapping straight lines of dots
Digital animation June 2025
This is an animation of a work that I created in 2017.
It starts with a of a row of dots which are repeated and rotated to form a star shape. This shape is then repeated and repositioned in specific locations relative to the original star shape. The resulting patterns are then repeated and repositioned in the same way.
The pattern generated by the positions of all of the repeated dots that were in the original straight line contains multiple overlapping and interacting circles.
Steel sculpture: hammerhead with spheres 10x5x2cm May 2025
A sculpture composed of the head of a cross pein hammer with two steel spheres attached to its sides.
Hammerheads standing on end have an interesting anthropomorphic quality to them. This anthropomorphism is exploited in this work to create an ambiguous form.
The work possibly suggests a human figure with spheres in the place of arms. Or it could suggest the head of a creature such as an insect with the spheres as huge eyes.
The steel spheres are attached to the hammerhead by magnets.
Relative rotating grids creating complex forms from simple forms.
Digital animation June 2015
A work from my Complexity series studying the generation of complex forms from simple forms.
Identical simple grids of dots are superimposed and rotated relative to each other. The grid for this piece is shown below.
Simple algorithms dictate how the superimposed grids interact with each other. For instance where the same colours on each grid are superimposed on each other they cancel out to generate white and where complementary colours are superimposed they generate black.
The genesis of this series was my attempt to find a visual metaphor for the creation of the complexity of the universe from an almost absurdly simple starting point.
The basic grid that generates the pattern in this work
