Claire Harron
she/her
Broken Cup
There's beauty in broken things; weathering and fading are not flaws—they are evidence of time, tension and transformation. Broken Cup; comes from 12 fragments of porcelain found in the soil of the restored Victorian Tea Kiosk in Blackrock Park. It's a polyptych of oil pastel on 12 canvas boards: impasto layers built up on rigid surface with edges carved and sgraffito etching cracked glazes.
A cup often appears in Buddhist teaching as an example of impermanence. While transience and change is a process of continual loss by which things disappear, it is also one of continuous creativity in which things that do not exist can newly appear.
Everyone who enjoyed tea in the park from these cups is long gone. These remaining fragments also echo vanitas, the popular allegories of the fleetingness of life in our European early modern still-life painting tradition.
Broken Cup, 2026, polyptych of 12 canvas boards, oil pastel, 95 x 95.5 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 1, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 2, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 3, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 4, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 6, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 7, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 8, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 11, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.
Broken Cup, Fragment 12, 2026, oil pastel on canvas board, 24 x 30 cm.