Bone black

There’s a funny sort of intimacy in making your own pigments. Memories of the day you found them, earth, stone, twigs, bones. The rain in your face, the smell of the mud by the river, in the woods, on the moor, threads of conversation. And later, the heat from the fire as you charcoal the twigs; the scorch on your hand from enthusiastic tongs. The feel of oak charcoal (scratchy!) compared to hazel or field maple (so soft!). Aching arms and the changing sound of the soil on the slab as grit becomes ink.

Bone black has been found in some of the earliest human depictions of animals. And I’ve always loved that thought; bison drawing bison, aurochs aurochs…It’s tricky I find; a bit too cool and the bones are brown; slightly too hot and they are calcined and turn a brilliant white. ‘Bones are the essence of the life they once held’ writes Terry Tempest Williams. Here bones regurgitated by an owl I know (shrew, wood mouse, vole) are joined by fox, crow, roe deer and fish. Creatures who once shared the same earth, air and water, whose bodies have passed through and between those of each other, whose paths have crossed in the dawn and the dusk, come together again through fire. They are fragile after charring, and crumble easily in the mortar to a dust dense with ghosts. ‘Sympoiesis’ suggests Donna Haraway, a making with. Tangled lives, the drawn line becoming collaborative, stories telling stories and stories and stories…

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