Londoner Zachary Peirce is a confident oil painter who applies the paint with thick, impasto daubs often fretting the surface to create added tension. He has recently completed a series of 30 paintings relating to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its ongoing aftermath. Images 1-7, displayed here, represent different stages of this exploration "and attempt to convey something of the atmosphere of decay, abnormality and threat that exists in the 30 kilometre exclusion zone that was created around the destroyed reactor". The Financial Times described them as having "an architectonic splendour crossed with a mood of decay and threat." Peirce's figurative work shares the same brooding atmosphere as his architectural pieces. Peirce was born into an artistic family (his grandfather is the famous American painter Waldo Peirce) and studied Fine Art at Middlesex University. He was recently shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.