I began work on this painting in August 2025, when I first started exploring the aesthetics of ambergris.

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Ambergris – ambre gris or grey amber – is a waxy intestinal product excreted by sperm whales. Since the whales specialize in eating squid, they must have a mechanism to protect their gut lining from the indigestible chitinous beaks of the squid. Ambergris is the evolutionary solution to this problem.

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Raw ambergris is dark in color, with a deep, earthy, fecal odor. After it is excreted by the whale, being less dense than water, it floats in the ocean and slowly oxidizes in the conditions of saltwater and sunlight. It transforms into a chalky substance with a rich, airy, metallic, champagne-like fragrance. This type of aged, oxidized "white" or "golden" ambergris is highly prized in the craft of perfumery; its presence brings an almost indescribable sophistication and three-dimensionality to fragrance compositions. Presented on its own, ambergris offers an incredibly complex and fiercely animalic scent that contains and reveals its entire memoir, a story written in scent: from plunging to abyssal depths, consumption and digestion of mollusks, excretion through the gut of a leviathan, immersion in salt water, and slow oxidation in sunlight and air, to the eventual respite found on the shores of rocky coastlines and sandy bays.​

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Ambergris is an alchemical treasure birthed by the sperm whales: that elder species of people who have elected to be the great divers into darkness, into profound chasms beyond all other life.

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The process of making this painting was intimately tied to some of my earliest forays into the craft of perfume making. While I worked on this painting, I began developing a fragrance called Le Plongeur – the diver – named for one of my favorite pieces of music by Loscil, which was in turn named for the world's first mechanically-powered submarine, launched in 1863.

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While this painting is complete, my fragrance Le Plongeur is currently still in iterative development; my most successful draft, version 23, is under evaluation.

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This original painting, Sperm Whale & Diver, is available for purchase for $2,000.