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I am a self-taught artist, who live and work in Lyon, France. I explore the world of plant-based colors and my art include works on paper, photographs and videos, as well as songs and poems. I want to create an immersive colourful experience throughout my work and pay tribute to the plants, by showing the healing beauty and fragile vibrance of the colours they give us.
My creative practice changes with the seasons and the years, responding to gluts and shortages in foraged goods, gift ochres arriving from friends, feathers moulted by the swans, a finding-trip to a new environment. It has not always been so. For many years I told myself what to do, what I was allowed to do, to draw, to make. How I came to be mainly free of the vice-like grip of the machine is a meandering story, but here’s the gist.
I enjoy the stories that reveal themselves when learning about plants. Morning glory is an introduced garden ornamental and invasive plant that has taken strangulating hold here; the beautiful glowing iridescent purple blue flowers smother the local plants. I have used it to make inks and dyes and have used the vines to weave. I use what is abundant and until now didn’t grow any dye plants, I would have to investigate the appropriateness of introducing any plants and have been happy so far to explore what already exists here.
Exploring the mundane and the sacred through Ancestral crafting The cave was tight. There was room for only one of us to go in at a time and myself and Nina, a petite French circus performer, had paired up to make the long, dark and cramped journey deep into the earth. The fat from the lamp burned along our willow herb seed wick and lit up the space around us. As we reached the end of the canal, my hand reached out, feeling around the walls ahead until the familiar slick feeling met my palms. Clay. I plunged my hand in and pulled out a fist-sized clump, then another, dreaming of the bowl ready to be birthed. Nina’s turn. She shimmied her body around mine, and we awkwardly swapped the fat lamp between us. She reached ahead, her hands just out of reach of the clay clad wall. I felt her body poise for a leap in the darkness to reach that extra inch, and in one swift movement, she leap. And the light went out. And we lay in the darkness, howling with laughter.
I have an abiding passion for plants, particularly the plants native to my home in the Pacific Northwest. When I discovered I could make ink from many of the plants I was already familiar with it kindled a childlike enthusiasm. My work typically depicts plants I have sketched in the field and then reworked in the studio with my own homemade natural inks. This is a true investigation of place from rocks to soils to leaves.
This year I am focusing on creating a line of artist quality, lightfast, all natural inks in a full range of colors. Most of the pigments are made from rocks, soils, and plants I have foraged myself. I have been making my own inks and watercolor paints from foraged natural materials for many years now, but making a full range of colors is a new and inspiring challenge.
Featured Artist Series
This part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists who make their own natural materials.
Please tell us about your creative practice? My practice is based around using materials gathered and grown, mainly at my allotment plot. I trained in textiles after a short career in nature conservation. My work is underpinned by a strong passion for the natural world and a desire to work sustainably. I completed an MA in Creative Practice a couple of years ago and this helped me to really focus on the materials available to me on the allotment. I use plant fibres for making cordage (I’m exploring various soft basketry techniques at the moment) as well as processing and spinning flax and nettle for yarn. This is highly labour intensive for small amounts of usable thread, but the process is as important to me as any ‘finshed’ outcome.
Woad (istasis tinctoria) is a biannual brassica. The leaves contain the precursors for indigo. In the summer of the first year, the leaves contain the most potential for indigo. In the early spring of the second year, the plants go to flower, these flowers transform to seeds that can be harvested in the summer of the second year.
Here are five of my favourite dye and ink plants. These are all plants you can easily grow in the UK. Buddleia - This is a perennial woody shrub/tree that grows commonly in urban industrial edges and gardens. The flowers start to bloom in June and continue throughout the Summer. The flowers are very abundant making it possible to gather large quantities without depleting the supply for the butterflies and bees who also love them. All the flowers, regardless whether they are pink, white, or yellow give a bright yellow dye. This is effective with an aluminium based mordant on silk and wool. You can also do bundle dyeing with the flowers as the flowers release their pigment quickly.
Learn more about Plants & Colour Study Groups. During 2020 lockdown, Flora Arbuthnott of Plants & Colour gave a call out for a new Study Group series based around plants and colour, obviously enough! We began as we continue today, with each term or round running for a 6 month period and meeting once a month for a two hour Zoom call. Having signed up out of interest to connect with like-minded folks, I could not possibly have fore seen then just how important these monthly meet ups were to become to me.