Meet Pari Aazami: Wild Alchemy, Moonrise at Dusk and the Art of Looking Closely
Artist Pari Aazami talks about Wild Alchemy, the joy of looking closely at nature, and why her gilded artworks need to be experienced in person at Natasha Pearl Gallery.
Moonrise at Dusk by Pari Aazami, a gilded nature-inspired artwork in the Wild Alchemy exhibition at Natasha Pearl Gallery near Canterbury.
Some artworks are best understood in person. Pari Aazami’s gilded, nature-inspired pieces shift with light, texture and movement, creating an experience that a screen can only partly capture.
This June, Pari is exhibiting as part of “Wild Alchemy” at Natasha Pearl Gallery near Canterbury, Kent, alongside silver sculptor Justin Gilday. Together, their work explores transformation, close observation and the hidden beauty of the natural world.
The exhibition opens with an evening soirée on Friday 5 June, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, and continues until Thursday 2 July. Visitors are welcome to come, meet the artists, view the work in person and discover original artwork available through the gallery.
Visit Wild Alchemy at Natasha Pearl Gallery
Opening soirée: Friday 5 June, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Exhibition runs until Thursday 2 July
Free entry, free parking, everyone welcome
View exhibition details
For Pari, the title “Wild Alchemy” feels especially fitting.
“It’s the marriage of the wild with metal,” she says. “Justin transforms insects and natural forms into silver, and my work is also a form of transformation. I’m bringing forward images of small living things and highlighting them with metal.”
Justin Gilday’s work explores the hidden beauty of insects and natural forms through silver sculpture. Using the ancient lost wax casting process, he transforms organic matter into delicate silver pieces, often set against natural wood. His work brings together curiosity, craft and a close observation of creatures that are often overlooked.
Creating a pause
At the heart of Pari’s work is a simple but powerful idea: to give people a moment of pause.
“The whole ethos of my work is that I want to create a pause in people’s lives and train of thought,” she explains. “Life is really busy. If I can do something that stops people in their tracks, gives them a little bit of relief and triggers their imagination, that’s what I’m after.”
Her pieces often begin with small natural forms that many people might walk past without noticing. A surface of lichen, a mark on stone, the texture of bark or the colours found in organic growth can become the starting point for an artwork.
Pari describes this as “elevating the ordinary”. It is a phrase that suits her work beautifully. Through scale, cropping, light and gilding, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. The tiny becomes expansive. The overlooked becomes something worth standing still for.
“I want people to look and think, what am I looking at?” she says. “Then I want them to decide for themselves. I want their imagination to be triggered.”
Moonrise at Dusk
One of the key pieces in the exhibition is “Moonrise at Dusk”, an artwork that Pari describes as one of her favourites.
The original photograph was taken in Cornwall, during a walk with her mother near St Michael’s Mount. Pari noticed an unusual patch of lichen growing on granite stone. There was bright yellow lichen beside white lichen, and within it a circular form that immediately caught her attention.
“When I looked at it, it just looked like the moon,” she says.
From there, the piece began to develop into something more atmospheric and symbolic. Pari printed a smaller artist’s proof first, testing how the gilding might bring out the layers she could see in her mind. She then created the larger final piece.
“I wanted to make the central piece look like the moon, so I accentuated the craters, which are actually the lichen,” she explains. “The sky is made up of lots of different colours of gilding on top of each other. The yellow areas looked to me like clouds, that feeling you get at dusk when the sun is setting and catching through the clouds.”
The finished artwork holds that sense of transition: sun going down, moon coming up, light shifting across a textured surface.
“For me, it’s that perpetual cycle of life,” Pari says. “Everything is continuous. As the sun goes down, the moon is coming up.”
Why the work needs to be seen in person
Pari’s work can be viewed online, but it cannot be fully understood on a screen.
The metal leaf is not simply decorative. It changes the way the artwork behaves. It reflects light, creates texture and shifts depending on where the viewer stands.
“You interact with it,” Pari says. “Online, the image is very flat. You don’t get the depth unless you see it personally.”
Her process is slow and considered. She applies size by hand, almost like painting, before laying down the metal leaf. Once the size begins to dry it becomes transparent, so she has to hold the image in her mind while she works.
“I spend a lot of time sitting and just looking,” she says. “I have to see the layers I want to bring through.”
In “Moonrise at Dusk”, some of the silver leaf is left unvarnished so it can slowly oxidise over time. The change is subtle, but important to Pari.
“That’s my little playfulness with the fact that I’ve made the piece organic,” she explains. “The piece is essentially alive. It’s changing in front of your eyes.”
This is why the exhibition matters. The works are not static images. They respond to light, movement and time.
A fitting setting near Canterbury
Pari feels that Natasha Pearl Gallery is a natural home for this body of work.
“Natasha’s gallery has this beautiful feel to it of community and ease,” she says. “You go in and you instantly relax. It’s like a treasure trove.”
That sense of calm and discovery suits Pari’s work. Her pieces invite people to step away from the speed of daily life and spend time with details that might otherwise be missed.
For this exhibition, many of the works were created specifically in response to Natasha’s curatorial brief. Pari sees “Wild Alchemy” as a chance to bring together the philosophy behind her practice more fully than before.
“It’s the first exhibition I’ve done which really shows my philosophy,” she says. “It brings forward what I’m trying to say.”
Visit Wild Alchemy
“Wild Alchemy” brings together the work of Pari Aazami and Justin Gilday in a free exhibition at Natasha Pearl Gallery near Canterbury.
Pari’s invitation to visitors is simple:
“Welcome. Have fun. Enjoy it. Relax. Put your worries away and come and get immersed in the light, in the beauty, in nature.”
The exhibition opens with an evening soirée on Friday 5 June, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, with the chance to meet the artists. The exhibition then continues until Thursday 2 July.
Free entry. Free parking. Everyone welcome.
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Selected works are being added to the website. Please contact the gallery to check current availability before visiting.
The Art of Detail: Ed Chapman’s Marilyn Monroe Mosaic Now at Natasha Pearl Gallery
A mosaic made of coins. A goddess reimagined. ```
Discover Ed Chapman’s breathtaking portrait of Marilyn Monroe — now on view at Natasha Pearl Gallery.
Ed Chapman’s Marilyn Monroe Mosaic Arrives in Kent
This masterpiece isn’t painted. It’s made entirely from thousands of British one-penny coins.
Now on view at Natasha Pearl Gallery in Kent, Ed Chapman’s breathtaking portrait of Marilyn Monroe blends iconic beauty with obsessive detail and British craftsmanship. Handcrafted from hundreds of precisely placed copper coins, this mosaic captures Monroe’s haunting expression with remarkable depth, light and shadow. It’s a piece that makes you look twice, and then lean in closer.
The Artist Behind the Mosaic: Who is Ed Chapman?
Ed Chapman is one of Britain’s most respected mosaic artists. For over 25 years, he has created portraits using unexpected materials including vinyl records, ceramic tiles, guitar plectrums, bullet casings, and now, coins. His works have been collected by household names such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Annie Lennox, and even footballers from the England national team.
Chapman’s art has appeared in international magazines, charity auctions, and global exhibitions. His Richard Burton mosaic, created with 500-million-year-old Welsh slate, is permanently installed at Swansea University. His work is now even taught in UK schools, alongside Picasso and Sir Peter Blake.
Why Coins? The Art of Unlikely Materials
Chapman is known for pushing the boundaries of traditional portraiture. In the case of the Marilyn Monroe mosaic, each coin acts like a pixel in a photographic image. The surface isn’t flat—it glows with subtle metallic shifts, reflecting light as you move around the piece.
It’s not just beautiful. It’s obsessively meticulous. Each mosaic fragment is hand-selected, cut, and placed with the precision of a watchmaker. Some pieces measure just a few millimetres wide.
Monroe Reimagined: A Goddess in Copper
The subject of this piece is instantly recognisable: Marilyn Monroe. But this isn’t the bombshell of the red carpet—this is Monroe as an icon, almost spiritual, her eyes closed, her face serene.
Rendered in varying tones of bronze, the mosaic evokes both nostalgia and reverence. The use of coins anchors her image in physical reality, but the precision of the work elevates her once more to the status of goddess.
A Collector’s Dream: Who Owns Ed Chapman’s Work?
Chapman’s collectors include royalty, celebrities, and institutions. His coin portrait of David Beckham, co-signed by the footballer himself, sold for over £8,000 at a UNICEF auction in Mayfair. Another mosaic of John Lennon raised £85,000 for Cancer Research at a gala auction hosted by Niall Horan and golfer Justin Rose.
Each of his artworks is a one-off, and many never make it to public view.
That’s why this Marilyn Monroe mosaic showing at Natasha Pearl Gallery is such a rare opportunity.
Now on View at Natasha Pearl Gallery
The Marilyn Monroe mosaic is available to view now at Natasha Pearl Gallery in Kent. Whether you’re an art collector, interior designer, or simply curious to see how thousands of copper coins become a luminous portrait, this is a work worth experiencing in person.
Gallery Location: Just 10 minutes from Canterbury with free on-site parking.
Every penny tells a story. Come and see them shine.