A quick scroll through Tuesday Riddell’s Instagram feed will yield brief yet dizzying captions like these: “birds decorating branches with foxglove flowers,” “raindrop-laced web,” “cluster of ladybirds hibernating in the curl of an autumn leaf,” “a bracelet of brambles,” “squirrels’ tails curling around an arcing branch,” “under a sunflower bridge,” “poppy seed showers,” “butterflies hatching in the moonlight while worms munch on kiwis,” “butterfly stealing a pearl.” And so on. Her subject matter is the teeming, swirling, ever-flowing life of the forest floor at nighttime, all the flora and fauna down to the seeds and insects and stems of the plants. Her artwork makes us privy to a hidden, fecund world—one that flares to life in the dark.
I’d been a fan of Riddell’s art for some time before one day I glimpsed a video of it. I was astonished to see how the flat piece I’d loved in photos glowed and shimmered when held to the light. I’d been so enamored of her renderings that I hadn’t realized how complex and delicate her medium is: japanning, an endangered 17th century technique developed by European artists to imitate lacquerwork from Asia.
To create each piece, Riddell sands and polishes a wooden board, then prepares it with up to thirty layers of lacquer that she mixes herself with pigments and varnishes before letting it harden into a black, mirrored base surface. Once the lacquered board is ready, she marks out silhouettes, works on the backgrounds using luster powders, and fills in the silhouettes with layers of shade and line and gold- and silver-leaf, and occasional mother-of-pearl. It’s a time-consuming, painstaking process; each artwork ends up consisting of around forty layers.
I now have a new life goal: to view one of Riddell’s pieces in person to see its complexity, the interaction between its elements, just a she can see the intricacies of the darkest nighttime wood, where each look brings something unexpected, even miraculous.
See more of Tuesday’s work on Instagram @tuesdayriddell
