Ash, Straw & Gold Art - Biblical Reference Mixed Media - Xabier Liz

Description: Original artwork 15x22 cm with ash, straw, black resin and gold. Material meditation on the ephemeral and eternal. Matthew 6:19-21. Unique piece.

6:19-21: Earthly and Heavenly Treasures

The title evokes the passage from Matthew about what moths consume and rust destroys versus what remains incorruptible. This biblical reference materializes in a dialogue between ephemeral and eternal elements: straw—vulnerable plant fiber, food for moths—and ash—residue that is both end and beginning, that which has already been consumed by fire—contrast with the gold of the acrylic and the frame, an ancestral symbol of the imperishable.

The black resin lends earthy density, weight, and opacity, while the gold introduces light, elevation, and transcendence. The gold frame is not a decorative addition: it is incorporated into the work as a threshold between the profane and the sacred, between the material and the spiritual planes.

Spiritual archaeology and symbolic matter

Each material carries its own memory and symbolic weight. Straw preserves traces of agricultural cycles, harvest, and decomposition. Ash is a testament to combustion, irreversible transformation. Gold—even though it's acrylic—evokes centuries of sacred iconography, altarpieces, and reliquaries. The work becomes an exercise in emotional and spiritual archaeology where matter doesn't illustrate concepts: it embodies them.

Rooted in the tradition of European informalism, the piece employs techniques of adding and subtracting layers to generate a topography that reacts to light. Under different lighting conditions, the work paints itself before the viewer's eyes, revealing contrasts between opaque and luminous, dense and ethereal.

Between painting and reliquary

The intimate format (15x22 cm) and integrated gilt frame place the work on the threshold between contemporary painting and devotional object. It is an inner geography and a landscape without defined boundaries, where the material and the symbolic merge in a reflection on that which endures beyond destruction.

A proposal of conceptual rigor and formal coherence, intended for collectors who value material research, discursive intensity and the primitive mystery of objects laden with meaning.

Technical details

• Unique, handmade piece
• Dimensions: 15 x 22 cm
• Materials: wood, ash, straw, gold acrylic paint, black resin, built-in gold frame
• Signed by the artist

Xabier Liz (Santiago de Compostela, 1971) develops a visual language where matter is both origin and meaning. Influenced by Leopoldo Nóvoa and traditional African art, his works are exercises in emotional archaeology that transform elements extracted from nature into landscapes without defined boundaries.