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About the Plant Colours Book:
There are so many good reasons not to use plant colours for painting: these colours fade; they are difficult to process into workable paint-pastes; once prepared, the colour will last only a few days before producing rank, unpleasant odours; once applied, many of these colours are quickly fugitive to light and/or atmosphere.
There is no need to use plant colours because there are so many new pigments available that can be used to replace their chroma.
The synthetic world has rendered natural plant and insect colours obsolete.
A visit to a leading colour manufacturer some years ago confirmed this to me. The idea of using plant colours, or colours from ancient minerals was deemed irrelevant, but in industrial production terms also an impossibility.
Because I have spent many years since the early 1990s working together with Kremer Pigmente, to promote the concept that all colours could be used , I have come to a different conclusion
I truly believe that the plant colours are the only choice if we are to save civilisation from itself.
When in contact with these plant colours, you will notice that all the colours have a subtle edge, yet many also appear to be brilliant and vibrant.
The action of working with plant colours re-engages the artist with the raw material: it is necessary to process the colour by hand to make it work, just as artists had to do some centuries ago, before the machine age.
Why not take a field of nettles and concoct a hot bath of rich green sauce to dye your pasta, just like Angelica, the chef in our restaurant in Monte San Martino?
Why not take the seeds of the Woad plant, grind them to a paste with egg white, or cut Fever Few flower heads and make a tea infusion, that you then dry out before mixing into a gel of gum tragacanth, before you start to paint? This is just what one of my students, Nabil Ali did for his final year degree show. The world is full of possibilities like these.
Please make colours from plants. I tried it and put the results in this book, with the recipes too.
Good Luck.
Pip Seymour,
Monte San Martino (MC), Italy, 2005.
How the Book was Constructed:
All the paint samples are applied to a special hand-made paper, from the studio of Nataan and Caterina Karen, the Nightcloud Studio, in Amandola, Val Tenna, le Marche, Italy. One of my neighbours. The paper is composed of Cotton and Kozo fibres, with no sizing. This allows the plant colour to flood into the paper fibres to give a rich, deep application. Naatan and Caterina tell me that the water in Val Tenna is second to none, pure spring water from unspoilt land. So I asked them to make this paper especially for the project.
The text is printed onto Hemp paper. It has a good, warm colour and is produced from a renewable crop.
The binding has been prepared by Clare Bryan.
The processing and the brushing is all my own work.
All the plant colours are taken from the catalogue of Kremer Pigmente
www.kremer-pigmente.com
Order Enquiries to:
Email: pipseymour@btinternet.com
or
PLANT COLOURS
Pip Seymour
1, Denman Road
London
SE15 5NS
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