What draws me to black opal is the way colour interrupts darkness. A small turn can reveal green, blue or red where a moment earlier there seemed to be only shadow. I want that encounter to feel intimate: something extraordinary discovered through attention.
The material and its origins
Black opal is hydrated silica with a dark body colour. Its play of colour comes from light diffracting through ordered arrays of tiny silica spheres. Those flashes are an optical effect, rather than light emitted by the stone. Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, Australia, is a celebrated source; the name describes appearance rather than certifying a place of origin.
| Material | Hydrated silica |
|---|---|
| Mohs hardness | 5–6.5 |
| Optical character | Dark body with multicoloured play of colour |
What it brings to my work
For this collection, I read its darkness as a space of possibility. The changing colours suggest discoveries that arrive slowly, and the many things a person can carry beneath a composed surface. This is my artistic interpretation, offered alongside the material explanation.