gabriela • 16 • Meath

16-18 Category   •  2026
The Nature of Time is a pottery piece I made aiming to show how nature is involved in everything, from birth to death. The piece is a skull with a tree for a neck. a blooming lotus flower, symbolising life, sits atop the skull while a chrysanthemum made of wire (representing death) creeps out of the eye socket. I wanted to show how nature is present in all things and how we can see the passage of time in it. This is why I made the lotus so colourful and vivid while the chrysanthemum seems withered and twisted. The other eye, however, is intact and alive. I used impressionism techniques of unblended brushstrokes to paint a sun and moon in the eye, another metaphor for life and death. The reason for the neck being a tree is to symbolise nature being at the root of everything. A melting pocket watch inspired by Dali rests on the neck to remind us of the passage of time. the chain that is connected to the pocket watch and mouth serves as a reminder that nothing, not even nature can escape aging and the passage of time, however it does not need to be negative as it is a cycle that repeats. Things die and grow again and nature will forever represent this. We come from nature and eventually we will go back to nature. in a world that has evolved so much, nature is still a very important part of our lives and it affects us all greatly.