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Vanitas | Caput Mortuum Study
23 carat gold leaf, encaustic wax, caput mortuum (mummy brown) natural earth pigment, and handmade organic gesso on 12oz cotton duck canvas.
Vanitas | Caput Mortuum Study draws upon the historic language of vanitas painting, where material beauty and mortality exist in a subtle tension. The work is constructed through a slow, ritualised process, beginning with a hand-made organic gesso ground derived from earth and mineral matter. Pigmented with caput mortuum (mummy brown), a colour historically associated with decay, residue, and transformation; the surface carries the weight of both material and metaphor.
Through the application of encaustic wax, heat is used to seal, fracture, and preserve the layers beneath. The surface records pressure, touch, and time, allowing fissures and shifts to emerge. These marks function as evidence of impermanence, erosion, and the inevitability of change.
23 carat gold leaf is then introduced, its radiance held in deliberate contrast to the sombre, earthen ground. The gold does not dominate but coexists. The intention is to reveal a fragile brilliance that speaks to transience as much as value. Light moves across the surface slowly, revealing moments of reflection that appear and recede with changing conditions.
In this small yet concentrated work, I explore the vanitas tradition not as spectacle but as meditation; and a quiet acknowledgement of mortality, materiality, and the beauty found in things that endure only briefly.