Extraction Abstractions
2025

This recent painting series, Extraction Abstractions, critiques the global extractionist history acted out by the European powers. The paintings appear to be purely abstract — compositions of colour, rhythmic brushstroke, glazing and other textures — but their titles allude to their actual sources: they are based faithfully on British Empire extraction maps from 1938 which show where to extract natural resources, such as iron, tobacco, copper etc. The paintings are a way of transforming images representing a capitalist view of nature as a commodity for making profit into something more poetic, spacious and undefinable. I mine the extraction maps, but for the sake of art. In doing so I hope to create an opportunity for reflection on the state of the planet where we live and for which we need to become much more considerate inhabitants and carers.

Extraction Abstraction (Alaska), 2025, 30cm x 40cm x 1cm, oil on gessoed panel

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