"Of Bays and Beaches" Series (2022)
This series consists of naturally dyed silk and cotton paintings. Each piece is dyed with natural materials like indigo, coreopsis, beet root, turmeric, and/or madder root (and much more !).To alter the colors of these natural ingredients, I've used pH modifiers such as citric acid, and iron powder to darken, lighten, or change the initial color altogether
To understand this series, it's important to understand how much of the final look is out of my control. The dye bleeds, the colors shift, and hours (or days) later you end up with a totally different image. Because of this, I find these little compositions to closer resemble the natural world around me than when I’m using a material where I have more control (pencil, marker, paint). The joy of watching the sunset over Lake Michigan is in its unpredictability and nothing closer matches that, in my opinion, than the unpredictability of natural dye on fabric.