Square meters of colour

Natural pigments

There are many different ways to gain pigments from your own environment. Some materials, like sand and stone, can be grinded with a mortar and pestle. Flowers, plants and food waste can be turned into (lake) pigments by using heat, alum and soda. And some metals, like copper and bronze, give beautiful different colours through oxidation. With this project I show how great the diversity of colours is from my own surroundings and how rich the natural colour palette can be to paint with. The possibilities and combinations are infinite.

Square meters

I collected materials from 6 ‘square meters’ in my own environment. Places that I had access to during my search for pigments. The materials I used to make pigments from come from: the forest, the ingredients for guacamole, beaches and islands, scrap metal, flowers and everything my young cat Shizzle has broken since she came to live with me, 2 years ago. I use all these pigments in 6 different abstract paintings, 1 square meter each.