“Before landing on this small island nation, I had never once had the experience of seeing the artifacts of a place, in that same place. Every stone mortar and diabase pounder and picrolite figurine and column fragment and ceramic vessel was created, used, loved, abandoned, and discovered well within a 200km radius of my body. Of and within. Total immersion.”
Read moreA Ground from the Ground– gypsum & gesso deep dive
Interrupting the continuous colorscape of the Atacama Desert were white mineral veins winding through the cliffs, clustering in the sand, glinting in the sun. Gypsum. I smiled to myself, recounting the mineral’s characteristics in my head, its uses from plaster of paris to traditional gesso. I visited the material from my favorite painting ground in its natural habitat: the ground.
Read more"What's in a Name?" – the nomenclature of pigment and color
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” Shakespeare certainly wasn’t thinking about artists’ pigments when he wrote this. Let me start by establishing that a pigment is a single substance with a consistent chemical composition, whereas a paint may include one (or many) pigments mixed with an adhesive binder that cures into a paint film. Where the convolution of pigment nomenclature closes doors to immediate clarity, it opens other doors to a deeper understanding.
Read moreA Return to Material Things – where I've been & why I'm back
Happy New Year, dear readers! Do you remember me? A thing or two has happened since the last post I made about earth pigments in 2018. Suffice to say, it’s been a whirlwind. But here I am! I’m back! I am excited to be returning to Material Things, and to use this as a conduit between all the most important things: you, me, painting, the stuff of our world, everything that has already passed, and everything yet to come.
Read morePurity Complex – the history of pastels and how to make them
Pastels are, without contest, the purest medium you can use. Although pastel may technically be considered a drawing medium, it’s often referred to as a painting medium because of how generous and workable the soft, chalky marks are. I say “pure” because of how minimally the binder visually shapes the pigments. When you look at an oil painting, the luscious oil has just as much presence as the pigment itself. Pastels don’t operate in this fashion. The pastel binder has very little presence, only asserting itself enough to hold the pigments into the shape of a stick and to loosely adhere them to the surface. Essentially, the pigments are able to operate chemically and optically with very little influence from the binder itself. Now, I don’t say “pure” as a qualitatively good thing or a bad thing– don't be wooed by the notion of purity as idealistic. For my work, the physical presence of the binder and its countless possibilities for manipulation is pretty essential, as we've been over before. I personally find pastels to be a bit too loose and difficult to have autonomy over. But man, do I love to make them.
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