Creating ethical and regenerative art materials has been a passion project of mine for some time now. It’s not a new concept: plant and mineral based color has been with us since the beginning, and it wasn’t until 1856 when the first synthetic color was created. Natural dyes quickly fell out of favor for the long-lasting and cheap synthetics, but with these beautiful colors came severe pollution to our air, water, and soil.

Read on if you’d like to watch my rediscovery of natural color unfold, and learn the techniques for working with this ethically crafted material.