Climate Emergency PrizeI, like so many of us, am deeply concerned about the impact our throwaway society is having on the environment. I regularly notice, photograph and engage with rubbish thrown on the street. I pick up coffee lids, juice and water bottle tops, paper bags, and plastic containers and take them back to my studio to draw and paint. 17th century Spanish painters Zurbaran and Catan, gave worth to the ordinary and disregarded. They painted humble and overlooked objects. Can rubbish be given similar care and attention? Can things abandoned as worthless be given a new life as paintings?Compressed is based on photos of a container I saw thrown down over growing grass. This had forced the green shoots to push through cracks in the plastic. It caused me to think about the visual contrast between the living and the inert – between the vibrant green and the translucent, damaged surface overlaying it.