Each shell I hand cut individually with pipe cutters to remove all the plastic, so it can be processed properly; from each standard sized painting (70cm x 58cm) roughly 1.2 kilos of plastic is recycled. The Covey painting took 3139 shells to create, and this came to over 5kg of plastic waste (and nearly 30kg in brass caps). The Gyr Falcon piece was even larger (image below), coming to 3569 shells.
every colour I can see, which usually ends up between 15 - 22 unique stencils for each painting. I then cut out all of the details I have previously drawn from these sheets, so that these stencils when layered correctly, bring the subject together one layer at a time, in a way I could not achieve with any other paint or technique. A print-like effect on the brass caps. If one stencil is off alignment, the whole painting is ruined. There is no way to remove this paint from the brass (unless you take a metal brush to it) which means everything has to be perfectly executed on the first attempt - there is no room for error.
The drawn stencils pre-cutting, the finished product being 'Betty', an example of a bespoke painting found in the Custom Work Collection
PROCESS AND PROVENENCE
Sustainability has become the main drive behind the work I create, to make something unique out of what would otherwise be waste. Tens of thousands of shells are used on average per day, per shooting school across the whole of the UK. Due to the cost and lengthy procedure of separating the plastic from the metal, the spent shells are usually burnt, or put into landfill.
Once I have cut enough brass caps for the work, the stencil process begins after having built the canvas. This starts with isolating individual colours from the chosen image, and drawing them onto a stencil sheet by hand. I will do this for
The details in these stencils are highly intricate, one of the reasons why the process takes as long as it does.
'Prey' on display at the Adnec Centre, during ADIHEX in Abu Dhabi (2024)
The first ever piece, Ho Chi Minh (2014)