We Are Star Dust

Wisconsin oil painter David Lenz wrote a beautiful bio for his Everyday People exhibit at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison, WI. In it he explained, "It is not a coincidence that four of the five most plentiful (known) elements of the universe are also the most plentiful in our own human bodies. We, and everything around us...are made from elements that originated deep inside large blue-white stars that lived and died billions of years ago. Quite literally, we are star dust."

I often think of our elemental interconnectedness, and am inspired by things like the origin of minerals and water that end up in grapes in Bordeaux that have formed the glass of wine I'll drink for dinner. How many centuries of people, animals, flowers, rock formations, and evaporations have been filtered into one glass?

This came to mind again when I found a treasure on my 92 year old grandmother's bookshelf called Color by Herbert E. Martini (1928, Bridgman, NY). The book is a practical guide to artists and student artists, filled with yellowing, pungent pages of antiquated descriptions of pigments, grounds, color theory and subject matter.

I'm in love with the description of some of the colors and the idea that "the artist of years ago had an intimate knowledge of his pigments because he was compelled to prepare them himself." Painting was and still is biological, chemical and geological in nature-- though so many of us pay so little attention to the science of our paints and their compatibility, toxicity or origin (and of course these days there are many synthetic alternatives).

Here are a few example descriptions from the book:

• Ochres- clay stained with ferric hydroxides...one of the oldest pigments known
• Carmine- a dye extracted from the cochineal insect and precipitated on an alumina hydrate base
• Sepia- a blackish-brown fluid secreted by the gland of a species of Mediterranean cuttlefish
• Van Dyke Brown- a peaty earth pigment which, because of its partially decayed vegetable matter, fades on exposure to light
• Blue Black- also known as charcoal black and vine black, is made by the destructive distillation of wine lees

So, the age-old plight of the artist to give eternal life to a subject is ironically inherent in some of the recycled organic materials used to paint (although Mona Lisa* perhaps didn't know she would be immortalized with cuttlefish/bug mush- or is it the other way around?)!

*Follow link to read about the actual material composition of the Mona Lisa.