CAROLINE ROSS

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CAROLINE ROSS

CAROLINE ROSS is an artist and maker living on a boat on an island in the River Thames. Using what nature provides and repurposing what humans discard form a large part of her practice. After the crows have feasted on the riverbank, the empty mussel shells become her paint palettes. The seasonally moulted flight feathers of local swans and geese become her quill pens and brushes. Badgers in the great Ridge Woods dig white chalk out of their setts and leave it in middens, where she forages to make pastels and paints. She also makes paints from foraged earth pigments, and art tools and inks from natural, wild and found materials such as oak galls, rusty nails and cherry tree gum. She teaches workshops on drawing as well as how to make all these wild-crafted things. Her drawings, paintings and illustrations can be found in books, journals such as Dark Mountain, online periodicals and private collections.

www.carolineross.co.uk

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WILD PIGMENT PROJECT INTERVIEWED CAROLINE ROSS IN DECEMBER 2019 FOR ‘PIED MIDDEN,’ THE MONTHLY NEWSLETTER…

WPP: Do you remember the moment when you realized you could forage for materials you could use in your drawing and painting practice?

 CR:  Like most kids I made things out of what I found in the garden, especially mud pies, so I was probably playing with earth as soon as they let me outdoors as a toddler. I used to craft little things out of twigs and yarn, and much later at art college on foundation course, I saw the work of Andy Goldsworthy, and made a few student-y homages. 

 However, the era in which did my BA and Masters in painting, there was absolutely no mention of environmental awareness, even at the level of toxicity of materials, in the entire 7 years I studied at college, university and later for an MA at Chelsea School of Art. Every kind of theory was explored, all kinds of identity politics, post-structuralist theory... but 'nature', along with 'environment', 'spirit', 'beauty' and many other terms were banned words, and any one even asking about such things was labelled 'earnest'. So sadly the only person with any real knowledge of traditional oil painting technique, for instance, was ignored, as he was 'only the technician'. 

Reading back what I just wrote, I can see that I am still angry. I understand the need for post-modernism, as it helped break the hegemony and it critiqued rigid power structures, introduced a far more diverse stream of ideas into art schools, cultural discourse, and into the media in general. However, all things have benefits and costs. The cost was a dismissal of many things that hold real value, and in some places, such as the London art world at that moment in time, a dismissal of almost all values themselves except for the arbitrary one of capital, which itself was mostly arbitrated by one Charles Saatchi, the uber-collector. I found great solace in foraging for fungi to eat, and this became a serious hobby from the age of 22 onwards. My then partner and I would meet up or holiday with two artists who were also fungi fans and spend memorable autumn times in the woods of Hampshire and Aberdeenshire swooning at ceps and unearthing troops of Hedgehog fungi. Blaeberries, rowans, crabapples, raspberries and damsons were also abundant.

 After abandoning the germ-free environment of art for the much more real life of being in a band, I did that for the next decade or so, keeping drawing going on the sly, privately. This secret art and craft practice, shoe-horned in between music commitments, continued for my six years in Scotland building a recording studio and recording lots with my band and others. Eventually I moved back to England to deepen my study of T'ai Chi and to be nearer my partner. In 2014 I was living on the river at last, immersed daily in nature, with 5 years of 'bushcraft' (often called earth skills or primitive skills in US) under my belt.

 I had followed an urge and enrolled on a course call 'The Stuff of Drawing and Painting' with Daniel Chatto at The Royal Drawing School, to learn how to make and use traditional art materials. I also read Paul Kingsnorth's 'The Wake' at this time, set in the apocalypse of 1066, when the Normans invaded England. This was a catalyst for all my training, research and inclinations to come together at last, and for no reason I could tell you in words, I started making a basket of natural art materials that would have been available before William The Conqueror invaded. Quills, shell palettes and earths started to fill up my boat, oak galls and cherry tree gum came back with me on forages for other things, then took over my baskets entirely. I went into class with archaic versions of the mainly Renaissance materials Daniel was teaching, which was fun for both of us. Some things I used were stone age, informed by my bushcraft making, such as the hide glue and hand ground ochre for paint. Other things were more refined, such as oak gall ink, parchment and quills, from the long era of illuminated manuscripts before printing took over in Europe. I found much to use in nature, and as my foraging threw up 'new ancient' materials, my research and experiments changed my art entirely, leading me to a new way of drawing, painting and making, all avoiding plastic, keeping to renewable natural materials.

 On a whim I took this basket of materials and a sketchbook to Dark Mountain's 'Basecamp' event in 2016, and as soon as Paul saw the basket of 'pre-Norman' materials he commissioned me to make work for an illustrated version of 'The Wake'. Well, it never got funded to print, but that's no matter. The work exists and has led me to where I am now, finally making the work I need to make, and having the great community of Dark Mountain artists and writers, of whom I am a part . Now I forage for so much of what I use, and trade with other natural materials people all over the world, sharing research and swapping pigments. Currently I draw exclusively with natural inks and paints I made myself and see the materials-making as equally important as the 'art'. 

WPP: What’s an important lesson you’ve learned from your foraging practice?

CR: There are two, and they seem paradoxical, as all really interesting things are..

 Firstly: You’ve got to collect the thing when you see it, not when it's convenient, or when you have the right gear, but now, right now, when it's available. That means hats full of hazelnuts and bread bags full of elderberries, pockets full of chalk. If you say, 'I will come back', you will end up too busy, or when you do return the squirrels will have beaten you to the acorns, as happened to me this year. After all, they have 24 hours a day to think about nuts. Imagine.

 The second thing is: you have got to respect the context and only take what is appropriate, and sometimes that means taking nothing and going home empty-handed, or with something else than you planned. This reflects that other creatures need what you also want, so  — leaving enough to share, especially if it's a primary food source for wildlife. It could be ensuring you leave enough of something to seed or spore, to regrow, as with carefully snipping seaweed, never pulling it from the rock, and not causing rock falls by chiseling crumbling cliffs. In some countries and territories something you would like to gather is held sacred by the local traditional guardians, or is protected for conservation reasons, and one should never violate the local rules in such cases. 

 We can do so much good by attending to each context as we encounter it, and not treating every situation as the same. Even the same place is different, every time we visit; perhaps a bird is feeding their young and needs the berries more than we do. Likewise we can do so much harm, turning up and taking what we want, with no thought for the human and non-human community of each place. It is a colonial mindset that says, 'I can take what I want', and an antidote to this is to do plenty of research, talk to local folks, and above all build real relationships to people, places and life-forms, not just be some extractive tourist.

 The common thread between both being on one hand ready to forage and gather at the drop of a hat, and on the other being ready to not gather something, given good reason, even if it seems in profusion, is what you might call 'open expanded awareness'. It is a willingness to take a wide view of the context in which we find ourselves. When I first used to forage for food, I had some of that 'scarcity panic' mindset, as I do not come from an affluent background, and sometimes I gathered too much, with little thought for others' needs. 

 Now, it is a great privilege and a real heart training to broaden my awareness, both in the present moment of foraging, and in the wider context of social, environmental and ethical factors, and let this inform my hands and eyes as I move around the earth. In showing this care, I feel I receive back so many reciprocal gifts —  a perfect shell here, a huge puddle of red clay there — with which to make my art materials. In these moments of sudden abundance, picking tiny berries in late sunshine, it feels like my ancestors, human and pre-human, are ranged behind me in a great wedge-shape, back to the farthest horizons, nibbling, laughing, sharing. It is the natural process of which we are all a part, whether we recognize it or not. When I forage, I know it in my bones like flint in chalk. 

WPP: Do you think that foraged, hand-prepared materials can or should replace a significant percentage of the synthetic art materials currently in use?

CR: Yes absolutely. Though we will always need to trade, sell and buy certain things, for sure. What I would like to see is more questioning of the materiality of art, and less obsession on the so-called concept (and the fallacy that pre-moderns had no 'concept' in and of their art). Fridays For Future, Extinction Rebellion and Culture Declares Emergency have brought our dire environmental moment to people's attention. If our art still uses 100 video screens, huge infrastructure or many liters of acrylic, is this still appropriate? Artists need to find their own ways to face the existential issue at hand.