Week Seven: Pastels & Earth Pigments

I'm now over half way in completing my Creative Health and Wellbeing through Artmarking course with UAL. This week we focused on Social Prescribing and completed a couple of activities using pastels. I really enjoy using pastels as it can feel quite child-like to make marks and blend colours. I treated myself to some Fabriano Tiziano Pastel Paper which has an earthy tone to it, making the colours pop. I'm thinking a lot about the materials that we choose to use for arts and health activities and how this sensory engagement with colour, texture and material alone can be therapeutic, regardless of what we are drawing or making. I'm thinking about the purpose that is served by materials and how important it is to pay attention to details such as the size of paper, or its colour and tone. I'm thinking about the qualities of materials and the emotions that they can bring. For example, I was able to create more dream-like blends of colour with the chalk pastels in comparison to the bold mark making of the oil pastels.

Oil Pastels

It was the first time that I had actually been taught how to use pastels - using light colours first and then the darker or brighter colours on top. I thought about how important it is to show participants the ways in which they can use art materials before letting them experiment and create their artworks. We were shown examples of the Fauvist and Impressionist styles which helped to direct us in the ways in which we used the materials. It was also interesting to learn a little art history along the way too!

Chalk Pastels

I'm used to working within arts engagement programmes that have tight budgets and am often left questioning what could be achieved with higher quality art materials. Would there be greater levels of satisfaction in the artworks created?

Earth Pigments

This week I have also been learning about the creation of soft and hard pastels using earth pigments. Earths have been used as pigments since prehistoric times which blows my mind. I'm thinking alot about the archaeology of colour and the various clays, minerals and metallic oxides that are unique to the geology of a particular place. The earth pigments above are sourced from Jackson's so that I can experiment with the pastel making techniques before going on to explore earth pigments that can be sourced from the East Midlands. I am also questioning if pastels can be achieved with lake pigments too!

Week Six: Grief

This week I've been thinking about grief, and how creativity and nature can support the grieving process. Grief is described as the mental or emotional suffering or distress that is caused by loss. During my own experiences of grief I have often turned to nature as a way of understanding the cycle of life and the emotions that I may be carrying. I have pressed flowers from sentimental places, carved wild flowers out of stone and sculpted out of clay. Slow processes and craft techniques that connect to the earth have been key to my own healing, and I am starting to recognise that creativity can help a person to transform with grief rather than to become stuck within it.

Within my Creative Health and Wellbeing course this week we thought about legacy. The legacy of a loved one that has passed, and the legacy that we want to leave behind ourselves one day. I thought about loved ones and the things that their life and death has taught me. I started to see that grief had started to become a celebration of a person's life and that it didn't just have to involve sadness and distress.

Reading List

I've turned to a couple of books that have helped me during my own times of grief. Good Mourning: Honest Conversations about Grief and Loss, written by Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn, has helped me to demystify grief and understand that there is no right or wrong way to grieve - and that it can also involve laughter! The first chapter titled 'The Elephant in the Room' addresses the misconceptions of grief:

"Our grief is as individual as we are. The way you respond to loss boils down to so many factors, including the role the person played in your life, past experiences, other life stressors, your mental health, cultural beliefs, and even your perception of death."

"Talking about the person who died might sound strange to others, and there can be the assumption that even saying their name will upset us or remind us that they're dead - as if we could forget that! But in reality it's quite the opposite.."

"Grief is learning to cope with major change, and it lasts a lifetime. It changes with intensity, but it is always there. It's how we learn to live with it that matters."

Drawing on Grief by Kate Sutton is packed with journaling prompts for drawing and writing about grief. This includes drawing a memory of a loved one that makes you laugh. Or asking where we can find comfort when we miss them? She writes:

"I'd heard about working through the stages of grief like it comes to an end, but I found the reality to be very different. It's ever changing and never ends."

"I didn't always find it easy to express myself verbally, so drawing became invaluable for getting my feelings out of me, and helped me share what I was going through. A picture can say so much, sometimes more than words."

"Grief can be a lonely place."

The Nettle Dress is a film that follows textile artist Allan Brown as he begins a seven year project to create a dress from stinging nettles foraged from the woods surrounding his home. He processes the nettles for fibres that he then hand spins into thread to be woven into cloth. During the process, Allan loses his father and wife:

"It was like I was being equipped with the necessary tools that was going to get me through what was coming up."

"On some levels it feels like it's been a process of weaving a shroud because it was totally there to absorb loss and grief. That feeling has gone into it, but it's been transformed. The threads are weak. The mind and body have been weak. But yet now this thing is really strong. The process is what has really been the most transformational."

"I started to feel that I don't need to worry about where all these threads are heading because it's already in there where they are going. So I've just got to follow the next step and do the next thing."

"It keeps demanding that you take the slow road. Each slow process fills it with intention. It's like the history of the last seven years crystallised into this material. Seven summers, seven seasons of nettles, seven winters of spinning, seven years of experimentation and experience that makes this cloth up."

"It's like the nettles gave me this gift. That stinging plant that wants to keep you away demanded a different way of being in order to unlock those secrets. It felt like I was being transformed by the nettle rather than the other way round. It's just like a slowing down acting like a break on my mind."

Pot Marigolds

I am questioning how natural colour making can support the grieving process. This could involve natural colour making in sentimental places or exploring the symbolism of plant life. I also think of the aspect of grief that is about rediscovering a sense of self and just how important it is to have a break from thinking about the loved one that we have lost. I am thinking of times when creativity and nature have helped me to remember who I am as a person, igniting a sense of adventure and curiosity in the world again. How important it is to make new memories, visit new places and not be all consumed by grief.

Erewash Canal

So here I am, spending my Sunday morning collecting plants for natural colour making along the Erewash Canal. I was incredibly excited to find a variety of plants that can be used in my local neighbourhood including marigolds, mugwort, yarrow and sumac! I forgot to take my foraging bags so my pockets were stuffed with items collected along the canal path. I wonder what can be found along this route in the seasons to come. Over the next week I will start to process and modify these pigments to see the rainbow of colours that can be made.

Staghorn Sumac

Foraging for Natural Colour

"After every storm there is a rainbow."

Week Five: Crab Apples & Mushrooms

This week I've been learning about Creative Health interventions for Trauma. I experienced a session of Narrative Exposure Therapy which involved creating a lifeline of events using a range of small objects. Narrative Exposure Therapy is used for individuals with PTSD, particularly in individuals with complex or multiple traumas. Starting at birth, we mapped out the key life events that have occurred whether good or bad. This led me to think of the things that have defined who I am as a person and to see them as simply life events. This led me to think of a tree that sits in my Dad's garden that was gifted to my parents in celebration of my birth: the crab apple tree.

Crab Apple Tree

The crab apple tree is associated with love, and produces blossom in spring and crab apples in the autumn making it a hive for wildlife. This year the tree is abundant with red crab apples and I took some away to experiment with to see if I can create a natural dye. I will follow the tree through the seasons to see if different elements of the tree will create a natural dye. I will use its bark in the winter, blossom in the spring and leaves in the summer.

Crab Apples

I have also been on a Fungi Walk at Swadlincote Woods led by local mycologist Beverley Rhodes. Beverley was doing a survey of the site to see what types of fungi can be found at the woods and we were her helpers! We found the tiniest of fungi in the woodland, and some had interesting names such as lemon disco, poison pie and weeping widow. It was fascinating to learn that fungi are neither plants nor animals. That they are a kingdom of their own. Fungi are the fruiting body of the mycelium network.

Fungi Survey Samples

Fungi Samples for Natural Colour

This week I have been learning about mushroom colour making from Julie Beeler in my Natural Colour Making course by Plants & Colour. With permission from the Parklife Officer at South Derbyshire District Council I was able to take a small number of samples to experiment with for natural dyes. This included the birch knight, the deceiver and the shaggy ink cap!