When I returned to West Texas in 2025, I was struck by the intensity of the earth and minerals that color the landscape. Since then, I have continued my research in mineral and organic pigments, developing a palette comprised exclusively of locally sourced color.
Paint making from unprocessed minerals informs my practice by reconnecting artwork with the often displaced, mechanized labor behind the industrial products normally used in contemporary painting. The lengthy process of foraging and grinding raw color materials by hand can take multiple hours to produce one tube of paint, transforming common ochre into a precious resource while reshaping considerations around labor, consumption, and disposability. The restricted palette and manual grinding of minerals connects this work to both the complex particularity of location and a shared artistic and human experience dating back to prehistory.
