Maelstrom — Original

Fine liner pen and ink on paper — Monolith Collection

Original, one of a kind · Signed by the artist

A surface in constant motion, interrupted by moments of perfect stillness.

Maelstrom covers its entire 8x6 surface in a dense, rippling field of fan-like linework — thousands of fine parallel strokes curving and overlapping until the whole composition seems to churn, like wind moving across water or current pulling beneath the surface of the sea. There is no single focal point. The eye is meant to drift, caught in the texture, pulled from one swirling cluster to the next.

Then, scattered across the chaos: circles. Five of them, untouched and pure white, breaking through the density like planets suspended in a turbulent sky, or holes torn through fabric to reveal something calm on the other side. They give the eye somewhere to land before the current pulls it back in.

Every line in Maelstrom was drawn by hand with no room for error — a single composition built from thousands of individual, deliberate strokes over the course of roughly 40 hours. The density of mark making here is some of the most demanding work in the Monolith collection.

Details:

• Medium: Pigma Micron fine liner pen and ink

• Surface: Strathmore Mixed Media paper

• Dimensions: 8" x 6" / 20.3cm x 15.2cm

• Original: 1 of 1 — this exact piece will never exist again

• Hand signed by Matt Derbidge

• Ready to frame

• Ships flat in rigid protective packaging