Matthew Day Jackson is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores themes of mortality, human progress, and the relationship between nature and technology. His works often juxtapose natural forms with synthetic materials, creating tension between the organic and the artificial. Jackson draws from a wide range of influences, including art history, science fiction, and contemporary culture, to question the ethics of human intervention in the natural world. Vase with Flowers is inspired by sixteenth and seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes, which often presented a fantasy of nature’s bounty by depicting flowers from different seasons and regions together. Jackson draws on these historical compositions to address contemporary issues, using synthetic materials to emphasise artifice and human intervention.