Red is a very strong colour. It is the colour of the earth itself.

The initial impression of something, ‘earthy’ might be the calm, undulating hills of Wales on a sunny day. But, while red can be that immovably tranquil, it does so by it’s deep strength which can equally be expressed in an erupting molten mass from a volcano.

Removed from the outdoors, red continues to exercise his strength in the studio: His tenaciously pigmented fingerprints will not wash off a person’s skin for a week; his yell will cause your ears to crackle while grinding; and his stubborn refusal to sink in water once finely ground—as all rocks do—further demonstrates his tenacity.

These attributes are in keeping with red’s origins. Red ochre could be thought of as simply rusty, decomposed iron but, according to Plutarch, it is the substantive bones of dead gods—there needs be that such remains possess an echo of their origins, I think.

Red also connects us with the earth. The same ochre that pigments the earth gives colour to our blood. In our age of virtual self-aggrandizement and unnatural-actions, red connects us back to our reality—as the modelled clay of our earth. And, while mankind’s history attests to our own strength to create and destroy, we never do so divorced from the earth, but rather as an extension of it and ultimately, upon ourselves.

My very first pigment-hunt was searching for red from Hell’s Gate on the Mattawa River. It was a mystical adventure, and one that connected me with an artistic process going back 30,000 years. My, ‘red’ experiences remain my most powerful, and my most fun.

Related Posts

The Sunset Cliffs | January 25, 2013 Yesterday I walked to visit the Sunset Cliffs … here’s a place that’s already a paint palette! The diversity of colours is amazing! I collected a couple of rocks while walking along the cliff and the beach … I think I’ll make an atlas map when I get home.

Making paint with the Luiseño People | January 23, 2013 Yesterday I had an amazing opportunity to paint with a group of Luiseño children on the La Jolla Reservation north of San Diego. For over a decade, Dr. Norrie Robbins has been running the Science Explorers Club at reservations around San Diego with the express purpose of nourishing a love of the outdoors and  sharing values that protect the ...

Saint-Malo | September 5, 2012 I never knew that there were places in Canada where one could stand and be surrounded by a rainbow of brightly coloured earth—ochres and umbers creating every imaginable shade of yellow, red, and brown. But, I’ve discovered that Saint-Malo, in Quebec, is one such place … In researching possible places to explore for local-colour pigments on ...

Porte de l’Enfer | July 9, 2012 I’ve just returned from camping a little north of Algonquin Park! I especially love this region of Ontario—it feels like I’m remembering a part of myself when I’m there—and both the kids and I really enjoyed our time together. The highlight of the trip for me was canoeing down the Mattawa River by myself in silence ...

Monte Creek | June 14, 2012 The second day of exploring the local-colours of the Kamloops area  was no less exciting than the first! Perry and I hiked and rock-hounded for the morning—I think still satisfied with the yellow ochre of yesterday—but on our way our of Monte Creek we started noticing the hills … At first, I think we just wanted ...

Rock-Tumbler Results | February 21, 2012 Upon opening the rock tumbler (after a week of letting it spin) I had two surprises: First, my rocks had become a bubbly mess; second, the colour wasn’t as bright as I had expected. At first I thought that the bubbles were pretty cool—a foaming mass of red is pretty interesting visually—but as I began to ...

Rock-Tumbler Red | February 13, 2012 Early this year I bought a vintage rock-tumbler on eBay since I’ve been wanting to explore another way of creating pigments from the rocks I’ve collected. And, I’m happy to share that it arrived in the mail last week! Once I had it cleaned and oiled (which required a bit of work given its age) I ...

Prepping new colours | February 19, 2010 I’m now working on the second icon of my St. Barbara series, this one will be from outside Madoc, Ontario.  The colours from this location are much brighter than from Cobalt, and offer a naturally occurring yellow ochre and a beautiful Indian red. But, I’ve come to realize that I am missing a good brown colour ...

Madoc: Day two | November 25, 2009 I’ve been on trips where I spent most of my time looking for something and in the end was thankful to find it. But, yesterday I found more than I had hoped for on the first go, so Reiner and I decided to have a bit of fun and visit the Roger’s Mine. The Roger’s ...

Firing Pigments: Going hotter | October 30, 2009 While it has been good to see the colour changes that can happen when applying heat to the iron based ochres, this controlled fashion has limits for me.  Without pushing things I can get the pigment samples up to about 1100 °C (roughly 2000 °F) and this gets me well into the brown range of ...

Firing Conestogo Pigments | October 12, 2009 With the pigment from the Conestogo river collected and purified I began to test the effects of heating in earnest.  Increasing the temperature by 100ºF each time, I tested the samples from 300ºF (150ºC) up to 1700ºF (925ºC).  This was a whole day’s work, as the kiln needed constant attention and the samples were being ...

Cobalt: Minerals | May 27, 2009 So, what did we find in Cobalt?  Here’s a list of the minerals for those interested: Safflorite (cobalt): Collecting cobalt in Cobalt has a nice symmetry in my mind. Almost every mine site we visited offered a rock or two of this mineral. All told, I brought home over 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of it! This ...

Jasper pigment | April 29, 2009 Last year, when Maggie, Reiner and I were looking for magnetite along the shores of Lake Huron, we found a couple of nice samples of red jasper pebbles. At the time Reiner wondered aloud whether they could be used to make pigment colour, but with the rush of the project at full throttle, I really didn’t ...

Kintail: Green Vitriol | August 25, 2008 Creating an iron bloom was very exciting for me, and if iron ore had any use as a pigment I’d be quite content to stop here; but it doesn’t. My next step in creating a good Mars pigment involves changing the iron ore into iron sulphate (or Green Vitriol). There are a lot of different ways ...

Kintail: Bloomery | August 21, 2008 The other part of my first attempt that I wasn’t happy with was the lack of good walls for my bloomery. I’m not naturally someone who likes one-time use items and there was no hope of reusing the half melted stove pipe. So, I went looking for good firebrick … There was a place across the ...

Kintail: Magnetite | August 19, 2008 The magnetite collected at Kintail is great to have but there was one problem: Sand. No matter how careful we were I would guess that only 10% of what were carried away as magnetite. To solve this problem I decided to levy the one property that is indicative of magnetite: It is magnetic! After putting the ...

Kintail: Collecting Sand | August 18, 2008 Ever since my attempt to make iron ore failed I’ve been asking myself why? Many times in my life after something hasn’t gone according to plan that failure has actually became an opportunity to better understand my work. I guess in reconsidering how something works, and fitting into that a new experience, I’ve come away ...

Superior Red | September 13, 2007 Before leaving for his trip to hike up around Lake Superior, Reiner promised he would try to locate a vein of red rocks he had found 15 years ago. He wasn’t too optimistic about it because he had looked for it since and never been able to find it, but he would try nevertheless. I received ...

Georgetown Pigments | July 9, 2007 For this trip to collect pigment, I was very fortunate to have the help of a fellow member of the Kitchener-Waterloo Gem and Mineral Club, Reiner. After a couple of conversations on the topic of rocks and pigments, Reiner expressed an interest in coming along on my next hunt and so we agreed to a ...

Londonderry Red: Results! | July 2, 2007 As you can see from the photo above, refining the red ochre my brother and I collected from the old mine in Londonderry resulted in a wonderfully bright red pigment. It took longer to dry than I had anticipated, but I am so happy with the results that I’m not put out by that at ...

Refining Londonderry Red | June 14, 2007 The colour within my pallet that I am most unhappy right now is my reds. I have had little success in claiming or modifying the rocks I collected but today I thought I would give is one more try. After sorting through the rock samples my brother and I collected and grinding these down as finely ...

Burning Nova Scotia Pigments | April 28, 2007 For some time I’ve wanted to see what might happen if I heated the pigments I collected from Nova Scotia. As anyone who has ever painted might remember, two of the most common colours found among paints are raw sienna and burnt sienna; the only difference between these two pigments being that one is heated. ...

Nova Scotia Pigments | April 10, 2007 It has been 9 months since my brother, Aaron, and I spent the week collecting pigment/rock samples from old mines in Nova Scotia and the verdict is in as to which of these samples are usable. While I am excited about these colours, not all of them were what I expected (as you will read). ...

Nova Scotia: Finding Colour | October 29, 2006 While the gross work of pounding the pigment into colour was done, there still remained the work of finely grinding them. This work was done during a demonstration at the Homer Watson Gallery. When grinding with a glass muller, one can’t help but notice that some rocks grind up with ease, but others require a bit ...

Collecting Madder Roots | October 7, 2006 For the past three years I have been growing a few plants of Rubia tinctorum, commonly known as the Madder plant. Madder is one of the most permanent pigment producing plants. Its use goes back a thousand years in Europe and much further in the East. In the West (until the rise of Indigo, another ...

Glencoe, Nova Scotia | August 20, 2006 The man who we met on the trail laughed when we ask him where the mine was in Glencoe. “There has never been a mine here”, he stated. I didn’t notice the playful gleam in his eye and began to protest when he cut in with a laugh, “It was just a pit!” When I ...

Londonderry, Nova Scotia | August 17, 2006 Londonderry (then called Acadia Mines) was the location of a large iron mine and works until the 1920s. While no longer used to produce iron, the colours reported from this site included a wide range: Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Brown Ochre, and Indian Red. This sounded promising and we thus made it the first stop ...