on the last day of my week retreat i spent today gathering and learning about devon and cornwall earth and mine waste pigments with Pete Ward at Studio Kind in barnstaple.

we started at fremmington quay, for a little geology class. this is where coal and lime from the welsh valleys landed in devon to be exchanged for clay, pottery and grains.

it’s also a place where the earth shifts of 100s 1000s millions of years ago created the different strata of locked in earth, sand, forests, minerals that have made the most beautiful seams of colour. we felt, smelt and gathered small amounts of pigment from what had already fallen – given up from the earth to this place for us to pick without digging or hacking with force, damaging the already precarious landscapes. be gentle and respectful in gathering.

we regathered ourselves and samples of earth, back at the gallery in the restored old pannier market where i used to shop as a child with my nana. and we learned lots more from Pete, his lovely stories and takeaway boxes full of such a range of beautiful colours. his simple and direct approach to process so in tune with my thinking on inks and textile dyes.

less is more.

accept and work with the natural qualities of what you have been gifted.

it’s not about replication of synthetic. it’s a different aesthetic.

let the materials guide the direction and decision making.

with all the colour i had to remind myself about the black! biddy black. bideford black. mined nearby until the 1960’s, this was the reason i had come.

15 years ago i had started making natural inks. black inks in particular. on one session my tutor mentioned ‘biddy black’. i was surprised – i had spent lots of my childhood around there and ever since, i’d never heard of it. i looked it up and found a little to intrigue but not much. a couple of years later i looked again, the internet had become more useful, and pete’s pigment project at the burton gallery came up. then came cancer, covid and so many more years later, i was at last nearby, the street names i recognised from pete’s photos. but didn’t get to the source.

and so this week, i came to devon for a break, to be outdoors, resting and creating in nature, when i saw the workshop post. incredible serendipity!

now here i was, with the sticky, lovely blackness i had sought and thought about for so long in my hands at last.

i won’t write about it in detail as it’s all in Pete’s brilliant project archive.

it’s properly black. and smooth. we grind it and mix it with water, gum, egg yolk and linseed. it flows and sticks. simple.