Starting with Earth
The colour of place; the place of colour
I felt to begin with a return to the land, and specifically the motherland…
I have in my studio a great bounty of earth pigments from Lebanon’s mountain range, a remarkable array of colours for which I long ran out of names, with far more chromatic intensity than the washed-out palette of the British isles. Perhaps my Lebanese ochres look all the more compelling to me because I can see and smell the place where I gathered each of them, feel the ice that still scrunched underfoot on those early morning winter expeditions. When I paint with them, it’s not so much about the result on paper but about this connection they hold to a small part of the planet I really miss.
I’m wary of turning colour-gathering into another way of exploiting the Earth, but as long as such a personal connection exists, I feel there’s a genuine exchange happening. The day I can no longer relate the pigment to the land will be the day I’ve crossed the line, like starting to think of people as disembodied numbers. So I wanted to show a bit of the living land that my earth colours come from.
The Lebanese terrain is incredibly favourable to observing and accessing geological layers. Fossicking was a favourite activity when we were kids, but now my attention is turned more towards its pigment richness. Up in the mountains, no distance at all from Beirut, rain falls, freezes, thaws, freezes again, continuously breaking the landscape into bite-size pieces.
As children, we knew we could use these small colour stones to write with like crayons on hard surfaces. I can still see my elementary school friends rubbing small pieces of sandstone on concrete to makes piles of colour powder: my first ever encounter with natural pigments, though I hardly realised it at the time (and yet I never forgot the sight).
Walking into an ochre landscape, I learn so much from the way colours rub along each other, their abundance or scarcity, whether they need breaking up with a hammer or scooping up with a spoon, what likes to grows around them. The landscape also likes to hand out case studies…
The yellow stones have turned red where the heat of a fire licked them. Yellow ochre is a hydrated iron oxide, and when subjected to enough heat, it loses its water content to become red ochre, as illustrated here. You never know what a seemingly dull hue can turn into when you roast it, which can be done simply and safely, in a stainless steel pan over a kitchen cooker.
Another: This small boulder shows a complex geological story. Thin red veins like these run through the whole mountain range and speak of dramatic events far too old for any human to have witnessed, though I suspect a distant consciousness of it surfaces in myths of Titans and other world-shaping beings. As for the yellow stripes on the right, equally spaced like the layers of a tiramisu, I can’t even begin to guess.
And now the carefully labelled samples are broken down and levigated to isolate the pigment, as I can’t possibly take kilos of rock in my suitcase…. The sediment is returned to the earth it belongs to, and the colours I take with me are ready to use.
I wouldn’t normally use energy to dry up ochres, but when I’m in Beirut for only a few days all this pigment has to dry fast enough to come back with me! I recommend heating up at least a small amount for a different purpose: that’s when the earth reveals its scent signature.
… and also, frequently, its temperament, because some ochres dry up placidly while other sputter indignantly.
From place to painting, one of my works at least was a direct homage to this bounty of colours, made entirely with ochres gathered on that one frozen mountain top. It’s titled Out of the Untamed Land, and the word can be read either barr, “the land or wilderness”, or birr “devotion, reverence”. What more can I say?
Stunning colours and work. We must go foraging in England together one day, I know where there are bright earths, not at all washed out. They are secreted beneath the greensward, I assure you. Glad you're here on Substack.
Beautiful and inspiring. In concept and execution.