TILKE ELKINS

STATEMENT

I work with wild pigments on found surfaces as an embodied, material connection with place. In 2019, I coined the term wild pigments to refer to mineral, botanical and human waste-stream derived colorants that can be foraged in all places where interspecies communities exist, be they in remote, isolated environments or overgrown urban zones. Foraging for pigments is a complete sensory dialogue which introduces me to multivalent learning and transforms what I can share as a teacher and friend. 

Applying wild pigments mixed only with water to refuse generated by humans that has made its way back into the landscape — weathered planks, dislodged concrete, wayward plywood siding worn smooth by wave action — I inhabit the painting that is the world. With a paintbrush as the only tool I carry with me, I spend time with place, foraging for pigments, making paint, and painting where I am. I respond to place with color in a frameless, multi-dimensional, collaborative space that draws me into a relationship of giving and receiving with the land.

The paint — or really, just dust — is eroded by weather over time, and returns to its place of origin. In some cases, when the paintings leave the landscape and travel, I offer the boards for sale but the pigment for ‘rent’ only, with the agreement that I will wash the paint off the supports after a time and return the pigment dust to the land, leaving the waste wood with its palimpsest of the painting event behind. The time the pigments spend as a painting generates rent money which I direct to traditional land custodians in the places where the pigments were foraged.

The imagery in my paintings includes what I call ‘records’ of the feeling of seeing experienced by a body in motion, and color abstractions inspired by maximalist abstract artists’ palettes from the early 20th century, like Sonia Delaunay and Paul Klee.

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My studio use of foraged pigments overlaps with Wild Pigment Project, an ongoing social practice art piece I initiated in 2019, intended to connect artists to each other and the land by increasing shared knowledge about the use of wild pigments, ethical foraging, cultural histories, social and racial justice, and land stewardship.

The project opens dialogues about what it means to use these pigments in the era of planetary crisis and cultural upheaval. How do current relationships with pigments differ from the use of natural pigments in previous art historical eras? How do contemporary artists from diverse communities engage these pigments? What does it mean for artists to participate in a reciprocal, gift economy in the context of capitalism? Can settlers practice ethical relationships with foraged art materials on stolen Indigenous lands?

Through Wild Pigment Project, using social media, teaching opportunities, and Pied Midden, a monthly newsletter, I initiate and foster these inquiries.

To read more about Wild Pigment Project, go to my recent essay, On Wild Pigments, in Pied Midden, issue no.39.