Tuesday Riddell grew up in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, where she remembers not only catching butterflies on a monstrous bush outside her childhood home; but also hiding them in her bedroom as pets, along with ladybirds, recreating their natural environments through containers. Not much has changed since then; the artist recently welcomed us to her studio, set in the top floor of City and Guilds’ facilities, which was populated by different species of ethically collected butterflies, kept in a pearl jar, which Riddell carefully presses sections into her recent works trough imprints. Butterflies are not the only animals that coexist in her space – Riddell’s studio is inhabited by moths, peacock feathers, lobster claws, fish ceramics, and even snails made out of pearls, sliding themselves through her windows. Eerie and mystical, gold-leafed sculptural bats rest upside down the walls of her space, whilst a black feather rests inside a transparent skull jar. It is no surprise that the artist references the 17th Century genre of Sottobosco paintings, being this dark and magical genre reminiscent of all of the time she would spend on the ground playing with insects.
