earth art

I’ve been having a wonderful time painting sweat peas, snakes, lizards, calla lilies and red maple trees in a private home this past week. I’ll be painting tree frogs in the entrance way next week!

Tree frogs on philodendron leaves

Painting sweet pea vines

Burgandy Calla Lilies in bathroom

friendly snakes in the grass

sweet pea vines

collared lizard

International, UK based, magazine Resurgence printed this article by myself and British artist, Cea Blythe.

My husband and I went up to the beautiful North Umpqua River this weekend to tour waterfalls but I discovered some great pigments along the way!

Some nice orange and yellows

and a beautiful soft green clay

Why is Earth Paint Sacred?

Well, it’s a well guarded secret by the Aborigines in Australia and it’s forbidden for anyone to talk about it, but there are many guesses and of course obvious reasons. It was a general belief among Aboriginal cultures that the geographical features of the land were created by a mythical snake as it journeyed over it. The ochre seams were believed to be the “tracks” left by the snake through the earth, and therefore just one remove from touching that god-body.

There are probably as many dreamtime stories about red ochre as there are tribes, but most of them have the spilling of blood as the central theme. For example, one dreamtime story is about a handsome man named Kirkin who would stand on a high boulder at sunrise every morning and comb his golden hair, enjoying all the adulation and attention from others. Except one person, a healer named Wyju, who saw right through to his vanity. Kirkin hated him for this and plotted revenge. He tricked Wyju into leaping into a trap of spiked spears. Kirkin laughed while Wyju writhed bleeding into the earth. Ever since, the Aboriginals have gone to that specific valley for red ochre.

grinding pigment

Red ochre is an integral part of the initiation ceremony of young boys when they become men. In Arnhemland, novices are smeared with ochre in sacred clan patterns on their chests, with white clay masks on their faces. The paint is part of the secret initiation. Anthropologists say the red earth represents men’s blood (death) or women’s menstrual blood (birth) but there’s another theory that the iron in the red ochre acts as a kind of magnet to show Ancestors and Aboriginal people the way along sacred paths.

Recently, modern day Aboriginal art has become very popular around the world, selling for large amounts of money in major galleries and museums. But guess what type of paint they use- acrylics! Perhaps this makes it less complicated for them to represent their secret and sacred Dreaming stories for outsiders if the materials themselves are not sacred. As if by changing the paint, the designs begin to lose the things that make them dangerous and powerful.

contemporary Aborigine art

*info from “Color” by Victoria Finlay

At one time, all of Australia was a huge network of trading posts. And good ochre pigment was one of the most prized items to trade. “Wilga Mia” in Western Australia is one of the most sacred ochre mines on the continent. If you want to collect any you have to ask permission from the traditional aboriginal owners and also from the sacred beings who live beneath it’s ancient chambers. It was still being mined and traded in the 1980’s, although by the end of the 20^th century it was being collected in plastic buckets instead of bark dishes.

In the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, there’s another famous ochre deposit. For thousands of years Aboriginal expeditions (70-80 men) would walk for two months to travel the thousand- mile round trip to collect their red-gold ochre at a place called Parachilna. They would return with 20 kilos of ochre each in possum or kangaroo skin bags, and on their heads they’d carry huge grinding stones from a nearby stone quarry.

Then in 1860, guess what happened, you guessed it, the white guys arrived. Farmers arrived with land and sheep ownership claims and obviously didn’t want the Aboriginals to eat their sheep or walk across their land. But the natives continued to take sheep meat for their journey and walk across their land which soon became punishable by hanging. In 1863 there was an “ochre massacre” when scores of Aboriginals were killed by angry settlers. Then someone from the South Australian administration suggested a solution! They decided to “move the mine to the Aboriginals” so they wouldn’t have to make the journey. But they moved the wrong mine. They removed four tons of ochre from a mine owned by another tribe on the coast and spent weeks hauling it back. It was a completely wasted effort because the Aborigines wanted none of it.

The white settlers missed the point that it was a pilgrimage involving elaborate ceremonies in collecting the ochre and bringing it back. Also, the sacred ochre was essential for trading which happened when one item is seen as equal in value to another. But free ochre had no value. And lastly, the sacred ochre was used for painting ritual designs and this other ochre from the coast was not good enough or sacred enough and didn’t contain the hint of mercury that made it sparkle.

• From “Color” by Victoria Finlay

Tasmanian Ochre Mine

Ochre was the first color paint on this planet. It has been used on every inhabited continent since painting began, and it’s been around ever since, on the palettes of almost every artist in history. In Swaziland, archaeologists have discovered mines that were used ATLEAST 40,000 years ago to excavate red and yellow pigments for body painting. Native Americans are known for their body paintings and I just read that the first white settlers in N. America called them “Red Indians” because of the way they painted themselves with ochre. It acted as a shield against evil and also protection against winter cold and summer insects. Like the Aboriginals in Australia and most indigenous cultures, they considered ochre sacred and infused it into their everyday objects like clothing, tools, pottery, rawhide, etc. Trade for pigments among tribes and later with European traders expanded their palette of colors. The ancient art of Sand Painting among tribes in the Southwest took advantage of the great geologic range of natural colors in their environment and was a form of religious expression. In its original form, Sand Paintings were created to exist only a few hours. But a movement by Native Americans in the latter half of the 20th Century created permanent Sand Painting as an art form.

Navajo sand painting

Make a Sand Painting

Ingredients

• 1 cup Craft Sand
• 1 teaspoon earth pigment

Place sand in a glass jar (not plastic) and add the desired amount of pigment. The amount given is only an approximation. Shake vigorously to coat.

Since pigments are not dyes, their fine particle size mixes with the sand to coat it, but does not actually dye it. Therefore this is not a colorfast application. However, coloring sand by hand and choosing single or combinations of pigments gives you an infinite range of colors that cannot be matched by store bought craft sand.

Tips for sandpainting

• Work with only one sand color at a time. Finish all areas of that color before proceeding to a new color.
• It is preferable to do dark colors before light ones.
• Upon completion of all colors, you may notice some powder or sand has invaded other areas of a different color. The use of a can of compressed spray air, such as that used to clean computers (found in Office Supply) will blow this excess off once all areas are completely dry. Compressed air is also useful for dusting and cleaning sand paintings.

Himba woman covered in red ochre

There seems to be confusion in all the books and articles I’m reading about the word “ochre”. Some say it’s just a specific color, some say it means “earth pigments” or colored clay with many possible colors and some say it means iron oxide. I think the general consensus is that ochre means any natural earthy pigment with iron ore in it. It could be brown, red, orange, or yellow or any shade in between. And “natural earth pigment” means any colored clay with certain natural occurring minerals (including iron oxides) that give it various colors.

Rustrel ochre mine

Painting Live at Tease during First Friday Art Walk

Painting Live at “Tease”, a swanky cocktail lounge in Ashland, was alot of fun last month. It was also challenging trying to stay in “the zone” space with everyone I knew in Ashland stopping by to chat (which was also wonderful by the way). I couldn’t bring my big glass palette and tons of jars of pigment so I brought tubes of earth paint from my favorite paint co., M. Graham. They’re local and environmental and use walnut oil in their oil paints. If you pick out earth colors- yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw umber, etc. and make sure it has the word “natural” on the back of the tube, then it’s a natural earth paint. If it says “mars” or doesn’t say “natural” then it’s synthetic.

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“http://www.fanningart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/earth-painting-12-300×225.jpg” alt=”” width=”300″ height=”225″ /> Leah painting an interior strawbale wall with earth paints