The active workplace

Reflections on Barberton dust and turpentine

The cobalt was still wet on the palette when the afternoon light shifted across the workbench, catching scraps of zinc and handwritten notes left beside the half-finished canvas.

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ground pigment

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oxidized copper

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raw canvas

Mineral earth

Copper patinas and ancient hills

I kept this rusted copper fragment from the Barberton hills for two years before it found its place in the canvas. The surrounding landscape bleeds into the turpentine, the dust settling on frames left leaning against the brick wall.

Nothing here is clean or manufactured. The earth provides the mineral weight that oil paint alone cannot capture.

Evidence of making

Four stages of material accumulation

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Scrap and metal

Grinding pigment

Impasto layers

Natural aging

Collecting weathered zinc, iron filings, and discarded mechanical fragments from the hills.

Milling raw lapis and cobalt earths by hand with linseed oil on stone slabs.

Building thick, textured surfaces that retain the physical motion of the knife and stiff bristle.

Leaving canvases exposed to studio air, dust, and shifting thermal gradients to cure.

— Afternoon light

Brushes with blue pigment resting beside squeezed tubes and scattered notes.