Existence Tissue experiencing the last exhale—the global extinction of all species.
These oil paintings are made with waste stream pigments foraged from specific human events and the places they occurred. Each work is a collaboration with place and time—and, by extension, with those who were there. These pigments carry memory. These forms are part of our human lineage.
They are visual stories. Remembrances. Requiems.
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Dark Strata
Quin de la Mer, 2025
Oil paintings made with Coal foraged in Svalbard
Dark Strata is a series of oil paintings created with coal pigment gathered from the mines of Svalbard. Coal is the compressed body of ancient forests, a metamorphosis of ferns and trees into black stone across vast geological ages. When left in the earth, it is not only memory but also a geological archive: a keeper of carbon and ancient breath, holding the planet’s balance in its dark strata.
In Svalbard, coal carries a double resonance—once the fuel of Arctic industry, now a fading trace of human extraction. To paint with it is to feel both its quiet power and its violence: the beauty of ancient life still present in its mineral form, and the devastation released when it is burned.
This series seeks to hold those contradictions together—to honor coal as both forest and archive, and to grieve what has been lost. It is an invocation of geological memory and a mourning of what extraction has undone.
More paintings soon…
Waste Alchemy: Rivers Remember
Quin de la Mer, 2025
Oil paintings made with reclaimed iron oxide pigments
These three oil paintings were created using pigments filtered from rivers once choked by iron-rich mining waste. The ochres and reds are not traditional earth pigments, but residues of environmental collapse: iron oxides and minerals extracted from contaminated waters.
And yet, from this toxic matter, life is returning.
Each painting is both elegy and offering—holding the trace of destruction and the quiet promise of renewal, as rivers that once ran red begin to breathe again.
When Rivers Run Red speaks to violence rendered visible.
Iron Nests evokes strange habitats shaped by toxicity and rebirth.
Silt Choked listens to the suffocation—and slow resurgence—of once-living waters.
They mark the threshold between ruin and resilience—where transformation begins.
Exhibition History
Exhibited in Bodies and Borders: Ecologies of Consent
The 109 Gallery, Chickamauga, GA + Online via Kunstmatrix
October 1, 2025 – January 31, 2026
Presented by Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD) | Curated by Leah Dalton | Juried by Beverly Naidus
View exhibition PDF →
Watch my IG Reel about this work/exhibition here 🔗
The Last Exhale: Distillations of Human History (2022-23)
Catacombs of London’s Human History, WWII Blitz Rubble, sustainable oil painting on stretched canvas, waste stream pigment (WWII blitz rubble bricks) foraged while mudlarking along the River Thames under the Millennium Bridge, 80x120cm, 2022.
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Catacombs of London’s Human History, The Great Fire of 1666, sustainable oil painting on stretched canvas, waste stream pigment (burnt brick from The Great Fire of 1666) foraged while mudlarking along the River Thames under the Millennium Bridge, 24×36 inches, 2022.
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Distillations of Human History, Druid Fire Circle charcoal, sustainable oil painting on unstretched canvas stapled to the wall all edges showing, found pigment foraged from a modern Druid ceremonial fire circle in NE England, 6×6 feet, 2022.
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Distillations of Human History, Liverpool Oil Spill (1,2,3), sustainable oil painting process/materials on stretched canvas, waste stream pigment (dried petroleum from an oil spill) foraged on Crosby Beach in Merseyside, England, 2022.
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Hatton Gallery Atrium exhibition January 13-29, 2023