The Nurdle Project: From Plastic Waste to Something More

Somewhere along the way, this project stopped being only about plastic pollution.

It began with nurdles — tiny plastic pellets that are used to manufacture almost everything plastic. They are small, easily overlooked and, once they escape into the environment, incredibly difficult to remove. I started thinking about what it means that something so insignificant-looking can have such enormous consequences.

And, as often happens with my work, I found myself wondering how I could turn something I found disturbing into something people might actually want to stop and look at.

That became the beginning of this project.

Making the invisible visible

I have been collecting and researching ideas around nurdles for some time now, trying to work out how I could approach the subject in a way that felt true to me.

I didn't want to make a straightforward environmental illustration.

I wanted to create a world around them.

Something slightly strange. Something that felt as though it had been discovered in an old cabinet or taken from the shelves of some forgotten apothecary.

The more I thought about it, the more the language of alchemy began to make sense.

Alchemy is about transformation — taking one thing and turning it into another. But this project asks a rather darker question:

What happens when the thing we have transformed comes back to haunt us?

Nurdles are made to become something else. They are the beginning of countless plastic objects. But when they escape that process, they become pollution instead.

That idea of transformation, consequence and permanence has become central to the project.

The project is beginning to take shape

I have been developing a collection of six illustrated cards as part of the work.

I'm deliberately not going too far into the cards just yet because I want to share more about them in a future post, but I can tell you that each one explores a different aspect of the relationship between plastic, nature and consequence.

At the moment, I'm right in the middle of drawing them.

And this is one of my favourite stages.

Before colour, before ink, before everything starts to become atmospheric and mysterious, there is simply the line.

I've been creating the line art by hand, building up the imagery slowly and carefully. It is very much my usual way of working, but there is something particularly satisfying about drawing these images for this project because the subject matter is so different from some of my more whimsical work.

There is beauty in the drawings, but there is also something slightly unsettling hiding within them.

Which is exactly what I wanted.

Perhaps they will become colouring pages...

I'm also considering taking the finished line art and turning the illustrations into colouring pages.

It feels like an interesting extension of the project.

Colouring is usually associated with relaxation, escapism and quiet creativity. But what if those same drawings could also make us think about something uncomfortable?

There is something quite compelling about giving someone an image to colour and allowing them to spend twenty minutes, an hour or several hours looking closely at every tiny detail.

Perhaps that is another way of making the invisible visible.

And, for me, that's really what this project is becoming about.

Not telling people what to think.

Just giving them something to look at closely.

From the beach to the studio

One of the things I love about making art is that an idea rarely stays where it started.

A handful of tiny plastic pellets can lead to research.

Research can lead to sketches.

Sketches can become illustrations.

Illustrations can become cards.

And suddenly there is an entire little world developing around something that most of us would probably walk straight past on a beach.

I'm still working out exactly where this project is going.

There will be the cards. There will also be an installation I'm developing to go alongside them. There are sketches, experiments, objects and ideas that I'm still figuring out.

I'm not sure yet what the finished installation will look like.

And actually, I quite like that.

For now, I'm just following the thread.

One hand drawn line at a time.

More coming soon…