pied midden: issue no.7 : pigment watching: it's better than t.v. : amanda brazier
Originally published on February 7, 2020
let the bliss in, baby
I have a vision: someday, it will be commonplace for artists to make the art materials they use. Paint, ink and charcoal-making will be a regular part of childhood for kids, and a logical companion to painting and drawing. Information about conscientious foraging and health safety guidelines will be integral to culture everywhere, transmitted through sources of public information, and passed along between generations.
None of this will happen out of any sort of moral imposition. It’ll continue to spread the way it does now: through the pure joy of finding color in the land by communicating with all the beings there, and the deep resonant thrill of being able to make that color into something. As the joy spreads, the culture shifts.
Why is this joy spreading now with such contagious enthusiasm? A convergence of cultural events: climate crisis, Indigenous survivance, the on-going maker’s movement, Instagram revival, and the profound need for non-cerebral activities as a source of mental health, to name a few. Working with the land now is not merely a craft or an aesthetic preference: it’s a lifeline back to meaning and a delicate flame of hope.
What we call “politics” and “activism” need not look like martyrdom and drear. Pleasure, in fact, can be a more effective conduit for change. So as you drink in the many luscious hues of this gorgeous world that holds us — as you pore over ochres or mix up inks — let that bliss in. Vanish into that ecstasy, and let the delight of its suchness loosen your tightness and bathe your fears. Emerge more yourself, more in tune, and more ready to give.
red bank red
This month’s contributor to Ground Bright, our monthly pigment subscription offering, is Amanda Brazier, a Tennessee artist who works with earth pigments. She gathered her Red Bank Red clay pigment with her two young sons at the roots of an upturned pine tree behind her house during a moment of play and relaxation after a hectic trip to visit family. The clay, she says, is an ‘ultisol,’ which is the most common soil order in the United States.
I interviewed Amanda about how soil, foraging, and being a parent influence her work.
WPP: How has your experience of color evolved since you began to make your own paints?
AB: Before earth pigments, I was mostly focused on the pictorial content of painting. The concept was important to me, but I struggled with choosing colors that gave significance and narrative to my work. I remember mixing a neon green paint and wondering, “Is this really the best color to use? Do I even like this color? Why am I doing this?” In the nine years since I started painting with hand-gathered pigments, I feel as though my painting practice finally bears a certain weight and purpose. I love the colors I get to work with every day. They are subtle, beautiful, and meaningful. I can sit on the edges of a creek where I may have used to only see grayish rocks, and now I can find deep reds, bright yellows, and gentle greens. Earth color is everywhere; it may just not be as showy as the synthetic colors in our petrochemical-saturated culture.
WPP: What’s your relationship to soil?
Soil is a teacher to me. Here are a couple of lessons the soil has taught me:
• Patience. Geologic time is not human time. In fact, I can’t really even understand it. But, I must respect nature’s processes and learn to live a bit slower. Even working with pigments is a slow process by human standards. While I love what I do, I also sometimes get pulled into wanting the process to be faster, more convenient, easier. The earth is constantly telling me to take my time.
• Transition can bring forth new beauty. We most frequently find earth pigments in upturned tree roots, along creeks and lakes, outcrops, the edges of a trail, road cuts. What are these places? They are places of erosion, transition, exposure, where what was buried is brought to the surface. Similarly, life changes can beckon new (or ancient, perhaps) beauty to emerge. As a personal example, the past five years of pregnancy, birth, and new motherhood have unearthed more within me than I ever knew was possible.
WPP: What seeds your creative projects?
AB: My painting practice explores the way we we inhabit shelter and interact with the land and each other. My visual language is very much influenced by textiles and primitive dwellings, and also fencing, cinderblocks, and other elements of our built environment. Like the building process, the paintings develop through stacking, weaving, and assembling simple forms. The textures and patterns in my work suggest familiar spaces that not only cover our bodies but also connect our souls. Recently, I have been considering the permeability of the protective structures we build. I teach art classes at the county jail, which is composed of the most basic and bare cinderblock cells. I’ve just finished a couple of paintings using cinderblocks as a starting point. I try to take some beginning visual idea and figure out how to soften it, make it permeable, or bring out the complexity and layers of meaning.
WPP: Describe a foraging place that you’ve learned from.
AB: One of my favorite places to gather pigments is a spot on the side of Interstate-24. I drive the interstate from Chattanooga to Nashville frequently, and I kept noticing a streak of magenta in the limestone-shale exposure to the right of the road. It wasn’t until just a year and a half ago that I stopped to take a look. There was a bright deposit of red hematite along with violet, olive, and blue-gray shales and argillaceous limestones. The colorful wall of rock had usually appeared as a gray blur as I drove past at 70 miles an hour. Until the hematite called out and I finally listened. This place has taught me to slow down, even to be still, in the midst of a frantic, busy world. Speed and efficiency and racing along are not the most important virtues to practice. Relationships are built on listening, stopping to look someone in the eyes, being still and quiet in another’s presence, even our own.
WPP: Who are your pigment mentors and what advice from them pops into your head most often?
AB: I first learned to gather earth pigments from the artist Sandy Webster in 2011. While the color was a lovely aspect of a pigment, what was more important to her was what the pigment signified: the narrative of a special place, those with whom she shared time in that place, home.
WPP: What’s your favorite thing about your work that you share with students?
AB: Learning to open our eyes and learning to move slowly are two practices I love sharing with students. Students are constantly amazed by the vividness and variety of rocks and clays around us, once we learn to open our eyes and look. I’ve taken one group to my favorite spot on the side of the interstate. While at first it seems a bit crazy (or like we’re in some sort of emergency situation), we settle in, have a few moments of stillness and silence, and learn to move slow while others are racing by. As I mentioned earlier, the process of working with pigments is slow. But, after a full day of gathering, breaking down rocks, sifting, and making paint, we finish with a sense that this slowness and working with our hands is worth it. It is such a delight to share those moments of slow observation, discovery, and work with them.
WPP: What do you notice about your children’s interactions with the land through pigment?
AB: They are not afraid of running outside barefoot (or, let’s face it, naked - “geeky” as my two-year-old calls it) and being covered in mud and clay. They delight in it. My five-year- old is constantly picking up rocks and giving them to me for pigment work. He helped me gather the red clay for this month. Mostly he rolled the clay into little balls and threw them at me, but he also helped me slow down, take off my shoes, and wonder at the sacred, ordinary beauty of the earth. During a recent hike, my boys found a deposit of brilliant yellow-orange ochre. My oldest told me that day, “Pigment watching is the goodest, and it’s even better than watching TV.”
WPP: Do you think that artists everywhere would benefit from painting with earth pigments?
AB: Absolutely! Whether it’s a central part of your practice or a simple one time experience, connecting with the history of painting and of the land itself is crucial. Knowing paint is just as important as knowing how to paint. And if painting makes you more aware of the land and our relationship to it, even better.
Thanks, Amanda! And big love to you for your generous Ground Bright Contribution, Red Bank Red. Subscribers can look forward to welcoming Red Bank Red into their homes in a little over a week.
Amanda is directing the 22% of this month’s Ground Bright proceeds to the Tennessee River Gorge Trust, which protects more than half the 27,000 acre gorge, including several important Indigenous ancestral sites. On the edges of Chattanooga, the Tennessee River is the only large river canyon that borders a mid-size city.
Thanks for reading, everyone, and don’t hesitate to send comments and questions to me, Tilke Elkins, at info@wildpigmentproject.org. Your kind feedback will make me swing with delight on the indoor swing my partner and I hung from the ceiling at home on my birthday this year (best present ever!!).
Until Next Time!
In Pleasure,
~ Tilke
