Oil on perch leather. Searching for Vincent’s pearls is an ongoing series of thirty oil paintings on fish skins. The paintings depict vessels that have all been abandoned at sea after being used for contraband or the illegal transport of human beings. The title is a deliberate reference to a line from Vincent Van Gogh’s letter of November3rd 1876 to his brother Theo; “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths, it has its pearls too”