Two Crayfish Go to London: My Postcard at the Saatchi Gallery

Some of the best things in my life as an artist have arrived by surprise. This is one of them.

A gift in the box

A few months ago I placed an order for watercolor pigment through the Winsor & Newton website. When the box arrived, tucked inside was a little gift: a pack of watercolor postcards, part of a global project the company calls Art Mail. Each pack holds fifteen postcards on 4 x 6" cold-pressed watercolor paper, plus one special entry card with the address and postage already printed on it. The idea is simple: paint the card, register it online, drop it in the mail, and it travels to London to join a worldwide gallery.

I set the pack aside and, honestly, life got busy.

Painted in a hurry, posted on the way to the airport

The day we were leaving for Spain, where my kids and I spend a month each year, I remembered the postcards. Suitcases were half packed and the clock was ticking, but I wanted to paint something. So I chose the scene I love most, one I come back to again and again: two crayfish.

I painted them quickly, in layered blues, with deep indigo washes pooling into pale, watery turquoise, against a soft mint-green ground. The two creatures curl around each other, their long antennae drawing lines through the space between them. I signed the corner, let it dry, and that was that.

I mailed it on the way to the airport, with the kids and the luggage in the car. Then I got on a plane and did not think about it again.

The email

Some time later, an email arrived: my postcard had been selected for the exhibition.

I read it twice. Then the next time I opened my phone, the show was already up. The installation had been put together, and other artists and content creators were posting their visits to the Saatchi Gallery. Scrolling through their photos, I caught glimpses of my own little postcard on the wall, among thousands of others. I can't describe what it felt like to see something I had painted in a rush, in a hot, chaotic, suitcase-filled morning, hanging in one of London's most celebrated galleries.

About Art Mail and its theme

Art Mail is Winsor & Newton's first global campaign, launched in April 2026. It celebrates creativity, connection and community through one small, humble act: painting a postcard and sending it in the mail. Artists of every level were invited to take part, from seasoned professionals to people trying watercolor for the very first time at their kitchen tables.

The theme runs through everything the project says. The line printed on the back of the postcard I received reads "Our world is a spectrum of stories, big and small," and the project's tagline is "Thousands of artists. One destination." The invitation to each participant was to show the world from their own point of view. No postcard was meant to be better or more important than another. Together they form a vast, many-voiced picture of how people see the world around them.

The scale is remarkable. According to Winsor & Newton, more than 8,000 postcards were painted by artists in over 80 countries, and around 2,000 of them were selected for the walls of the gallery. The subjects range from portraits, birds and botanicals to celestial scenes, architecture, seascapes, pets, abstract compositions and imagined worlds. Seeing them hung in long, orderly rows of shelves, each one a tiny window into someone else's life, is a reminder of how much a small piece of paper can hold.

Winsor & Newton also invited a number of well-known artists and designers to contribute their own cards, including Giles Deacon, Heather Phillipson, Richard Woods, Mark Titchner, Susie Hamilton and Andrew Carter, among others. My little crayfish are hanging in very good company alongside them, and alongside first-time painters, which is exactly the point.

Why Saatchi, and why it matters

The Saatchi Gallery sits in the Duke of York's Headquarters on King's Road in Chelsea, a grand neoclassical building that has become one of the best-known homes for contemporary art in the world. It is known for championing living artists and for making contemporary art open to everyone, and Art Mail suits it perfectly. Admission is free, with no ticket required, and the show runs 1 to 11 October 2026, from 10am to 6pm daily, on the ground floor in Gallery 4.

For an artist, having work shown at the Saatchi Gallery is a milestone. Having it shown there as part of a project that puts hobbyists, students, professionals and celebrated names on the very same wall feels even more meaningful to me.

There is a generous side to the project, too. After the exhibitions, some of the postcards will be auctioned to benefit Hospital Rooms, a UK charity that works with artists to transform mental health wards into therapeutic, welcoming spaces. And the story continues across the Atlantic: a second Art Mail exhibition will open at Drawing Room in Brooklyn, New York, from 21 October to 4 November, with about 250 postcards on view.

What this means to me

I come to my work through nature, folklore and memory, and I have always been drawn to capturing the spirit of living things rather than their perfection. The crayfish are one of those subjects that stay with me. That a quick painting, made on an ordinary day with a plane to catch, traveled thousands of miles and found a home on a gallery wall is a gift I never expected.

It also reminds me why I paint. Not every meaningful opportunity arrives with fanfare. Sometimes it comes in the mail, in a box of pigments, and all you have to do is say yes.

My heartfelt thanks to Winsor & Newton for creating a project that opens its doors so widely to artists everywhere, and for making room for a pair of blue crayfish from Mallorca by way of New Jersey. If you're in London before 11 October, or in Brooklyn later this month, I hope you'll go and see the wall of postcards. And if you paint, consider this your nudge: the online Art Mail gallery is still a wonderful place to browse, and to be inspired.

Wit love, Cris

Art Mail at Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, London SW3 4RY. Free entry, 1 to 11 October 2026, 10am to 6pm. Brooklyn edition at Drawing Room, 101 N 10th St #206, 21 October to 4 November 2026.

Sources: Winsor & Newton: Art Mail Exhibitions · Saatchi Gallery: Art Mail · Winsor & Newton press release via Kensington & Chelsea Review · Art Mail installation coverage · FAD Magazine