The piece “Triceratops in Blue Ice” originated from a moment of intense fascination with a gigantic fossil head on display at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands.
The vast skull—massive, weathered, and telling the story of a monstrous herbivore from a time far beyond humanity, whose herd drowned alongside it—was visually compelling and made me want to honour it in some way. This starting point led to a series of montage artworks that sit at the intersection of natural history and digital art. In this piece, a photograph of the skull was first processed through a fractal algorithm, using the fossil itself as source material. The result revealed complex, stone like patterns that echo the deep time in which the creature lived and the river bed where its herd became trapped. The work opens a conversation about resilience, transfiguration, and endurance: of the fossil, of the scientific endeavor to uncover and preserve the past, and of art’s capacity to reimagine and connect with the distant “other.”