“Equation M Electro Cell” [5th to 8th October 2025] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic on A3 (42cm x 30cm) gesso primed 5mm wooden board, 3000 x 2199 pixels
Connecting the Circuits
With Equation M Electro Cell, I wanted to return to the hardware – the physicality of things, rather than how computers operate.
When I look at the finished painting, this feels like a heat-hazed circuit board, a motherboard still holding warmth from the last surge of power. Immediately I recalled my dad’s interest in electronics. I’ve written before about the “type: The Unfathomable… Artist – Electronic Version”. Equation M Electro Cell sits in that lineage of technical references.
My dad worked with soldering irons, resistors and capacitors. I work with pigments, surface and the subconscious. The instruments are different, yet the impulse is recognisable: to make a connection, to get something to come alive, to coax an interconnection between the inanimate and human.
Process
To give the central form its particular presence, the painting needed to be built carefully. I began by painting the surrounding ground in that deep near-black and allowing it to dry completely. The surface became a kind of stable void for the central characterisation to materialise.
Only then, the following day, did I lay in the central block of colour, working the wet paint precisely. This is the intricate part. While the paint was still malleable, I used sandpaper edge to drag, scrape, and meticulously draw through the layers. The method hints at Gerhard Richter’s drag techniques, although here the abrasive surface of the paper takes the place of a squeegee.
The sandpaper pulls the golds, ochres, electric blues and violets sideways across the image. It micro-reduces the physical texture whilst increasing the visual depth, carving out bands and striations that feel close to etched copper tracks on a printed circuit board.
Upon producing the chance ‘double M waveform equation’ at the top right of the colour block, I decided this is the entire piece itself. Further interventions with the sandpaper were measured visually—finite, and inch-by-inch considered in specific colour block areas.
Whenever I note a valuable artistic representation in a piece, I do everything to preserve the uniqueness – purposed or chance.
The Equation
The result is a kind of ‘flat textural’ field. Looking distinct from a classical era painting and more like something printed, pressed or photographic film plate– as if a motion recording in an analogue system had been frozen, glitched and made visible.
I called the work “Equation M Electro Cell” to explain a self-contained apparatus for energy transference. A cell of stored charge, or a fragment of data, suspended in the mainframe. For me, this has the same quiet magic as looking into an old radio and seeing the valves glowing: a mix of warmth and nostalgia with music harmonising softly in the background.
Did I ever tell you about my dad’s valve amp radiograms?
Artist produced and directed AI generation with Adobe Firefly.
Music licensed from Pixabay.
Provenance: From the artist’s Estate
Curatorial:
Father of Sci-Fi operates in the tradition of poetic film documentary.
Envisaging overheated mechanical instruments as a warning against unchecked manmade systems that built them; the film’s central imagery—gauges and thermometers—provide a fine argument for climate discussion in denial.
By placing H. G. Wells as the background inspiration, I’m drawing upon a vivid history of industrial biography to implore systemic commercial change.
Science-fiction is treated as a logic to prime societies into accepting large-scale industrial change. Avoiding the often reported dystopia of future civilisations. That same logic can be used to prepare humane futures rather than excuse extractive ones.
The film’s ecological thesis is a beautiful blunt instrument in itself.
War and resource harms are not only a human tragedy; they are an accelerant of ecocide. Ruining soil, water and air in the moment, locking regions into disaster zones through spiritual or monetary corruption. The poem names this as anti-cyclic use of Earth’s resources: a refusal to close loops, to repair flows, to respect sustainable limits.
Formally, the piece is a crafted sense of emotive visuals. Battlefield grounds read like scorched plates and ravaged lands. Ancient Egyptian symbology suggests melted ore and coinage, tying metallurgy to monetary currency and to the direct pricing of economic damages.
The narrative language is highly tactile—heat, force, mass—ethics coupled to matter.
For museums, Father of Sci-Fiinvites cross-departmental interpretation. Residing comfortably beside media art, environmental issues and design. Art speaking to public-facing programmes on climate literacy, post-conflict recovery and wise economical transition. The work’s request is modest and exacting: learn to read the warning gauges we already have, shift policy, industry and culture to fully enable political administration to appreciate avoidable risks.
“An instrument panel for conscience—counting the costs of economic ecocide”.
“NAWT” [17th/18th June 2025] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic on A3 (42cm x 30cm) gesso primed 5mm wooden board, 5000 x 3803 pixels.
“NAWT”
I view this piece as childlike, a baby suckling his mother.
Five compositional areas organised by raised gold ridges that act as structural boundaries and energy channels.
Left: A stacked, totemic block in reds and olives, pocketed with yellow cells. The perimeter gold line is noticeable, enclosing smaller islands and voids; interior ridges create sub-chambers.
Centre: A vertical plume of warm reds with ripple textures. Gold points punctuate the column, giving a sense of heat or rising material.
Right: A cool turquoise plane meeting a dark indigo/violet corner speckled with gold edging. The m signature contrasts the chroma and scale.
Palette & Surface Warm spectrum (red, ochre, olive) opposed by cool spectrum (turquoise, indigo). Heavy impasto gold forms the highest relief; underlying layers show brush striation and dragged texture that directs the eye vertically and diagonally.
Direction
A diagonal ridge travels from lower centre to the turquoise plane, functioning as a natural partition: it carries the centre visually.
Vertical waves in the red plume interlink to seismic waves works during the Iron Gall Ink flurry period.
Canvas Separation
Perimeter Gold Ridge: Seal forms from the background, preventing colour wash and establishing the object/ground hierarchy.
Left Internal: Multiple small gold lines divide the left block into micro-cells (pockets/voids), creating a chambered topology.
Central–Right Boundary: The raised, slanted gold ridge that delineates the warm centre from the cool right; is both barrier and channel.
Indigo Corner: Ragged gold edge where indigo meets the warm fields; the edge retains discrete gold as floating nodes.
Turquoise Plane: A near-flat field bounded by slight ridges, acting as a pressure release zone.
Compositional Understanding
Rule of thirds tendency: Left mass ≈ one third, central plume ≈ one third, right release ≈ one third.
Figure–ground: The indigo corner behaves as negative space whilst activated by gold; the left behaves as positive mass.
Behaviours
Gold medium used as structural relief and optical highlight.
Visible drag marks suggest slow, deliberate pulls; ripple patterns imply wet-on-wet movement control.
Edge fidelity of ridges indicates masking-free, hand-guided boundaries.
With “NAWT” I didn’t use masking, I rarely ever do. The last time I utilised canvas masking (whatsoever really or at least to any significant degree) is in Two Swans Together sometime ago in 2013. Goodness, the work I made for myself in Conker Lots for my refusal to canvas mask. Conkers affixed first, then highly careful painting, no masking.
Emoji hearts eyes mode activated from a distance.
Visual Meaning Containment vs. expansion; heat to cool; pressure building then venting. The eye experiences compression in the left and cooling/space in the right. The distinct canvas spacing makes this legible by preventing chromatic dissection and choreographing the viewer’s path.
Quadruple intellect angles sought, times ten to the power of one hundred.
Signature Placement Lower right m within the turquoise field—chosen to sit in the calmest zone, preserving legibility while completing the warm–cool dialogue.
No originating concept or preconceived theme(in the actual painting), just painting to enjoy the process. The title is the first word arriving to mind. A painter freestyling, having fun! Although originally I intended this composition:
Original composition for a new painting (NAWT).
Is this a concept or preconceived theme?
No. This is a composition. My painting from the outset was devoid of concept or theme since the original composition ideas didn’t translate into the painting.
I created same (a concept) upon painting, through the working act of subconscious play.
Whereas .. “DANGER: Men at Work with Missiles” had a concept.. symbology, signs, iconography. From here I produced the theme, which became missiles. The ‘signs’ interlinked as a visual concept:
“DANGER: Men at Work with Missiles” [21st to 24th June 2025] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic on A3 (42cm x 30cm) gesso primed 5mm wooden board, 5000 x 3725 pixels.
A sign-language visual painting: bold perimeter gold ridges define a two-part emblem that reads as industrial icon + ordnance bracket. Internal strokes (red/orange, turquoise, ochre, black) ride a white ground, all set against a matt green field.
Thirty seconds to comply. Sounds fair.
The palette and edging are engineered to feel like a warning placard lifted into relief.
From Study to Painting (alterations)
One of six study drawings made quickly on lined Notepad paper.
Study drawing (notepad, lined): angular A-like left mass + jigsaw-like leg; arm-bar stretching upwards (highest pencil shape), stylised facial totem nested in the body; linear hatching; a circular peg-coil (the original head with its adjacent arm); missile at this point is the intended triangular head looking up towards ‘m‘!
A3 painting: the facial totem becomes a mosaic of micro-strokes; the arm-bar is retained as a rightward cantilever (or left), softened by curved infill; all outer lines become raised gold fields; hatching converts to channels of colour; the lined-paper constraint dissolves into a continuous awesomely beautiful green plane.
Net effect: the sketch’s diagrammatic figure becomes a sign-object—legible from distance, intricately textured up close.
Hardwork is in the details.
Practice unseen. A life unfathomable.
Different.. communicated for you, by me. Honestly. I love.. places (compute the analogy, derive the connection, distance the meaning).
Use of Canvas Space
Scale shift: notepad lines → A3 board. The jump in size allows thicker ridges and deep impasto, turning flat signage into tactile relief.
Field control: the gold perimeter acts as containment; interior gold seams partition silver ground into cells, preventing chromatic dispersion. Soldering iron is a fusible metal alloy.. interlink NAWT, in wordplay. Please tell me you like my eccentric brain.
Background: uninterrupted green creates a civic-utility register (worksite, military range, municipal warning).
Visual Reading
Left mass: triangular engine/gantry—work zone, man-human-power, structure, a literal symbolic missile.
Arm-bar: launcher lever —missile semantics without literal depiction.
Internal script: curved strokes function as a traffic of signals—command streams, siren paths(?), evacuation arrows(?).. symbology as yet understood.
Black vectors: fault lines(?) / blast trajectories(?).
Turquoise and orange: emergency contrast pairs (sea/sky vs. heat/hazard).
Gold ridges: authority, hardware, state apparatus; also separation-field technology. Perhaps.
Symbology & Signs
This work visualises the Estate’s sign lexicon: simplified shapes that communicate under stress. The artwork pairs with “Ye Mud, Ye Mud” (hummingbird + sign). The hummingbird = life, agility, energy; the missile sign = threat, projection, interruption. Together they outline a grammar: warning vs renewal. The common element is the sign-board frame—public language.
War News & Civilian Anxiety
Headlines about strikes and air defenses have migrated into daily cognition as icon flashes. The brain processes shapes: triangles, bars, chevrons. This painting uses that compression. Acknowledging the worksite metaphor—“men at work”—dissecting work with missile labour: logistics, manufacture, targeting, interception. The result is an ambient alert: the feeling of operating under siren logic while still trying to build.
Micro-signature & Detail
Includes a rare micro “m” (embedded within the paint architecture), consistent with discreet practice. Relief height slightly varies across the perimeter; interior gold seams are intentionally irregular to keep the sign hand-made.
‘m’ detail within “DANGER: Men at Work with Missiles”
“Orange & Violet Untitled” [29th November 2024] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic fine art painting on A3 250gsm mixed media paper with 250gsm varnish affixed backing paper, 5000 x 6951 pixels.
Orange & Violet Untitled
I have chosen to highlight pre-published social media commentary in blue. If you have read my Instagram posts for works in this article you can quickly skip re-reading if you prefer.
Quote by me for “Orange & Violet Untitled”
“I just photographed this new work, a soaking wet impasto paper in the dark with camera flash.
After making it I brushed varnish on a 250gsm paper underneath to fasten the two papers together for greater rigidity. the purple from the wide brush in between, beautiful.
I used my palette knife underneath the paper doing so. this created unexpected resonance sounds.. something i 100% guarantee i never planned. Satisfied I am with this.” – 1900hrs 29th November 2024.
nb Please note the ‘purple’ colour is actually violet, nearer the blue wavelength. The entire painting work took me less than 30 minutes, timed, in two distinct drafts excluding the photography.
After the primary draft completed a quick second draft etching detail around both eyes during evaluation.
The use of camera flash in the dark simulates a live music concert. Whilst I chose to paint in portrait I did not purpose a face until the very last moment upon adding the violet and gold eyes to the composition. I envisaged an electric guitar throughout.
“Orange & Violet Untitled” [29th November 2024] represents cool guitar designs I made at that time, in an abstract painterly way. You can see Alienalis Mantis for further detail on those guitar designs (please click the link to do so if you wish).
“Orange & Violet Untitled” also represented something earlier in the day on the 29th November..
.. a busker singing in my hometown. An anecdotal story I shall tell anyone who asks me.
Goggles ROC
“Goggles ROC” [23rd December 2024] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic painting on partially torn A4 250gsm mixed media paper, 7000 x 7000 pixels with background for social media.
I feel “Goggles ROC” is a humorous piece.
“Goggles ROC” is made from a partially torn A4 paper supporting a work from 12th December I have worked upon since then.
The cadmium red acrylic is all from the 12th December draft workings over days of time, 100% unintended. I added copper and orange once removing the paper to make a work. ROC means red, orange and copper with regards to this piece. Building upon my artistic idea that colours such as red, blue, yellow et al do not derive political meanings, to me.
The Mars Black paint is mixed with water, dripped onto the paper then rolled carefully via gravity entirely holding the paper in my hands.
Fans of my work will note a similarity to “The Fathomable Scream” [16th/18th May 2024]. Aside from the ‘goggles’ which I purposed artfully, everything else in Mars Black is void of object or objective construction except to look balanced in composition.
To me this is the oft sought quality of prettiness, attractiveness to you as the viewer.
In artistic terms Picasso is my primary inspiration in brushwork for this piece. Basquiat’s use of any materials available for the function of making art is likely the reason I chose to produce a work in this way.
For clarification I genuinely love Chinese culture.
I love all peoples and cultures.
The title is a play on the word ‘goggles’ as this sounds amusing in English (to me anyway), with the word ‘rock’. I feel this artwork communicated the strength of Chinese manufacturing innovation and range.
By saying the ‘goggles rock’ I’m noting the products are cool, fashionable, well made.
In my opinion I view peoples of the USA, Italy and China as naturally inclined commercially.
The USA since indigenous tribes and settlers eventually co-traded after much civil war. The latter (then-immigrants) being adventurous types to seek out pastures new across the Atlantic/Pacific. Italy through ancient Roman Empire industry routes with a plethora of trades. China via highly disciplined cultures throughout the far-east. Nations like Japan and South Korea too for instance.
We (as in you possibly agreeing with me) could easily include Greek and Jewish culture too, in terms of the inherent working malluability of the people.
Subjective opinion you appreciate, as clearly I note individual/national endeavour around the world from an artistic viewpoint.
Here is a chart from Wikipedia about global working hours to click and read if you’re interested (stats upto 2022 at time of this article, 29th April 2025):
Of OECD nations the five highest average annual working hours are (2023 stats):
Mexico: 2,207 hours
Costa Rica: 2,171 hours
Chile: 1,953 hours
Greece: 1,897 hours
Israel: 1,880 hours
Untitled Orange & Black (Face) #1
“Untitled Orange & Black (Face) #1” [19th December 2024] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic painting on A4 250gsm mixed media paper, background for social media, 5000 x 7221 pixels.
“Untitled Orange & Black (Face) #1” is a pure paint play in the Basquiat spirit of artmaking. I believe this was the first time I consciously incorporated the idea of guitar ‘pegs’ into a portrait. That said, after making “Alvis Dede Wimsey III” I re-viewed “Face with Gold Mouth” and realised guitar ‘peg’ shapes at the vocal chords!
I find my paint plays similar to how musicians produce new songs.
Eye Snout with Sand & Silver
“Eye Snout with Sand & Silver” [sometime prior to 11th to 23rd February 2025] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, brush collage & palette acrylic on A3 (42cm x 30cm) 2mm gesso primed wood panel, 5000 x 3577 pixels.
“Eye Snout with Sand & Silver” is an instinctive piece where the careful silver/sand framing brought attention to the arty central paint play.
The central A4 is scrap paper having pressed together cadmium-red. Some days later to mix paint I began to use said same scrap paper. Mixing pseudo-black at the top for another painting.
The central paper upside-down to how you see here, throughout.
I brush-scraped out cadmium-red with the pseudo-black impasto on the paper to clean a brush. Incredibly, this became the snout.
Afterwards orange and umber just having fun.
Turning the paper 180 degrees, I liked the artiness.
The paper then affixed to wood panel with thick cadmium-red to obscure the paper edges. A rectangle sand acrylic surround added. Further cadmium-red flourish onto the wood panel beyond the central paper.
Finally the silver rectangle acrylic framing to perfect the visual.
A piece founded upon paint play whilst retaining its originality.
A few straight-from-my-camera raw evaluation photos for you:
“Eye Snout with Sand & Silver – detail one”“Eye Snout with Sand & Silver – detail two”“Eye Snout with Sand & Silver – detail three”
Gold Sun Paint Play
Well, having read thus far into my article please let me thank you with a bonus paint play to enjoy:
“Gold Sun Paint Play” [circa 25th April 2025] by Matt The Unfathomable Artist, acrylic on opened cardboard box (approximate 11in x 8in (28cm x 21cm), 5000 x 3882 pixels shown upon cropped gesso canvas for publishing purposes.
“Gold Sun Paint Play” is just me having fun on a piece of cardboard packaging.
Likely made on one of the days I worked “Surfaces #n” (working title), a new wood panel piece as yet unpublished.
I love making these delightful paint plays..
.. I love seeing people enjoying life and having fun.
The Unfathomable Artist 