Color Extraction from Earth Pigments

The iconic color associated with the West (red cliffs, white sands, yellow deserts) are considered earth pigments. Ochres are the most common of these earth pigments and are iron-based - iron being the 4th most common element in Earth's crust. Earth pigments include ochres as well as other non-iron based soils, salts, stones, and minerals: cobalt rock or layers of million year old oyster shells solidified into calcium-rich lime.

Earth pigments have been used in human expression from time immemorial. We pick up ochres to rub into our clothing or embed into our tools. We use a finger dipped in mud to draw on a rock -- from the caves of France to the deserts of Utah. We add crushed rock color to our cheeks and lips before we leave our homes.

Earth pigment is used to draw, to dye, to paint, to print. Marks can be made crudely -- with the simplicity of drawing with a rock -- or get as complicated as the recipes Italian chemists and paint-makers keep closely guarded as secrets.

I seek color on my long walks into the desert, in the deep cuts of road banks on road trips through the West, on a run through the woods with the dog. I find it in the holes I dig for trees to be planted in my front yard, or while sitting on a riverbank throwing a line and fly into the water. Sourcing earth pigment is about noticing and looking closely at nature. When the snow melts in the spring, what colors, carried by water and sun, stain the drifts? When you pull a root from the earth, what bits and pieces of color still cling to it? What makes up the mud you track in and sweep up off your floor?

I gather earth pigments in my hand, in a jar, in a sack -- whatever vessel I have to carry them. I process them as one would process any other foraged treasure: carefully cleaning, labeling, sorting, and experimenting to find their optimal use. Heidi Gustafson's Book of Earth, Native Paint Revealed, and the Toronto Ink Company newsletter have been essential in learning to treat the pigments I source with care, but I also trust my own hands and intuition in processing and using these ochres. I treasure them like small mementos of place until I can transform them, as humans have been transforming them for aeons, into art.