Wild pigments

For years now, making nettle ink or gathering leaves from other plants has changed my relationship with the landscape around my home, and with the way plant life takes shape within it. The same plant, gathered in the woods nearby, gives a different ink in spring than in autumn, and from one year to the next. I notice whether the plants grow abundantly or have a hard time. I plan my making around the moments I can harvest, so the work follows the natural turning inward and outward of the seasons.

I work less and less with materials whose origin I don’t know, not knowing whose hands grew and picked them, or whether that happened in reciprocity with the natural world. Small acts matter here: done with enough attention, they turn into rites of their own. An ongoing encounter, playful and experimental, slowly seeping into the whole of my practice: process, form, material and colour.