in the ruins : may ’23
Caroline Ross writes of IN THE RUINS: “This pale green is a beautiful color, but it doesn’t leap into your eyes. It gently invites the gaze. It looks best against oranges, pinks and reds, and really sings mixed with a little white.” She gathered the pigment from “the edge of a spoil heap of sea-smoothed quarry waste and unwanted rocks from the island where the stone was sourced for Buckingham Palace, Whitehall (the UK Government offices) and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire in 1666. Due to this extraction, the island was denuded of trees, stripped of its soil, and all the men were made to work the quarries, and were not free to do other work, even to join the army during wars, for hundreds of years. As the next Coronation approaches, and I am happily 5000 miles away, I like to think of these little packets of green dust, foraged from The Crown Estate by this commoner, winging their way into your hands. I hope they help you make great art for land and freedom for all.”
The pigment is also named for the times we find ourselves in: the “ongoing catastrophe of modernity, climate change, and the predicament we’re in.” To read Caroline’s full essay about IN THE RUINS, please go to Wild Pigment Project’s Pied Midden Archive, under SUBSCRIBE—> NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE, where you can also listen to the essay read aloud by Caro herself.
contributor: Caroline Ross
Caroline Ross is an artist / writer born and living in Bournemouth, Dorset, UK. She gathers earths and makes pigments and paints from materials found in the southwest of England, such as ochres and cherry tree gum, as well as inks from oak galls and other locally foraged plant sources. Her first book 'Found and Ground - a practical guide to making your own foraged paints' is out in UK and USA July 2023 from Search Press and comes out in 2024 in German and Spanish editions. She teaches in person and online. All her work and courses can be found at Instagram.com/foundandground and foundandground.com Her long-form writing can be found at carolineross.substack.com where she publishes a free illustrated essay every Monday morning about Tao, the embodied life with antidotes to the Hubriscene Age.
Caroline Ross is a four-time Ground Bright contributor. Her previous pigments include OAK ROOTS CHALK/12.19, DART GOLD/RED/BRONZE / 04.21, and SPOILS, 03.22.
Image from Caro’s website.
Image from Right to Roam’s website.
22% donation recipient : Right to Roam
Caroline describes Right to Roam this way: “A portion of the proceeds will go towards Right To Roam, a grass roots land access charity for everyone in England. In my country, over 92% of the land and rivers are not open to the people, whereas in Scotland or Sweden, for instance, everyone has the right to roam, if causing no damage. For 1000 years my fellow English folk have been displaced from the land, and this charity are using art, peaceful trespass, creativity, song, history, solidarity and education to force changes to the archaic, Norman Conquest era injustices that still persist (and have even been getting worse), to this day. They are already making a difference.” www.righttoroam.org.uk