Featured Artist Series

This is part of a series of blogs featuring inspiring artists and craft people who work with local natural materials.

My artistic practice is driven by curiosity and exploration. 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. These paintings are a testament to the abundance of beauty all around us. I believe the simplest elements in life can sometimes be the most rewarding- a bright red ochre, the deep brown juice of a discarded walnut husk, sunlight falling on a leaf.

Gathering Red Ochre from an Orgeon Road Cut

I live in Portland, Oregon and I prefer to forage for my materials. Living in the city I have limited access to land. The yard that I do have is too shaded to grow most dye plants. In wild areas of the city I find an abundance of plants suitable for ink making. I keep a mental map of the useful plants in my neighborhood. As the seasons change I alter my daily walking routes to visit the plants I want to harvest in any given season. I also look out for neighbors who are growing dye plants, like coreopsis, as ornamentals. One neighbor with a particularly robust coreopsis patch in her front yard has given me permission to deadhead her plants. I take the dried up flowers and she is happy to have someone clean up her plants throughout the summer. This summer I gathered tansy flowers and goldenrod from an urban natural area and used them to make lake pigments. There are lots of black walnut and chestnut trees in my neighborhood so I gather the husks of those in the fall. Prunings from neighborhood fruit trees make for good winter inks. Right now I have an abundance of pruned bay laurel branches. When I keep my eyes open I find more plant matter for ink making than I could ever use. One neighbor’s waste is another neighbor’s treasure!

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. Each ink is made from pigment and homemade watercolor binder which I mull on a glass slab. When I paint with the inks it is a completely different experience from using commercial paints. These natural colors make sense to me. They have become an integral part of my work. Gathering and processing my own pigments is very time consuming, but I enjoy making the inks as much as I enjoy painting with them. When I sit down to paint with the inks I feel I am having a conversation with friends. The inks have come from places that are intimate to me and I carry that intimacy and fellowship into my painting practice.

In the past I struggled to depict the natural world with the bright watercolors I bought off the shelf. Once I began using natural pigments the subtlety and nuance I was looking for was right in front of me- layers of color in one ink, color that that changes as it dries, color that breaks and bleeds. I want to share this experience with others. Painting with natural inks is a form of color therapy for me. I feel intense joy simply painting a row of swatches and watching the colors unfold. All of the colors blend beautifully. There are no wrong notes, just new cords to play. Using these inks has built my confidence in my own work and given me abundant fuel for experimentation. I believe that I am just at the beginning of my explorations. The more time I spend with the inks and colors the more fluent I feel in using them.

I have been quite isolated from people this winter due to Covid restrictions and a partner who is out of the country caring for an elderly parent. Working with plants and ochres has been a deep comfort to me. Foraging for them and processing them into ink has woven me more firmly into a network of connections outside of human relationships. That grounding in place and season is an antidote to loneliness. There is so much wonder and connection just outside my doorstep that even in the city I feel embraced by my place within the natural world.

My website is strataink.com where you can find my collection of natural inks. The best place to follow my ink making process and artistic practice is on instagram @strataink. I am also on Pinterest @Strata_Ink. I look forward to connecting with you there.