Chalk is...

The illuminating ghost of aliveness

Previously, I wrote some essay type posts about the pigments I use. I love everything there is to be said about my colours and I could talk about them forever like talking about friends and family but I didn't find the way I was writing very fun. So this is an experiment in writing in the most fun way I can think of, which is the same way I think and see. It is hopping from one rock to another across a flowing stream. It is watching fireflies- every little light a seeking out and no less exciting than the first one.

I love to make associations like 'if I were a tree, what tree would I be?' Finding the similarities in two totally different things gets you looking and thinking about everything around you from a different perspective and suddenly you can't stop looking at things. Suddenly every tree bark and leaf shape is a type of personality and the noise they make in the wind is a voice. You are reminded that trees are just really amazing and you forget your original line of inquiry but you're looking now and being gifted the wonderfulness of trees all over again.

So I'm going to try it out with one of my absolute favourite pigments- Chalk. Perhaps I'm so in love with chalk  because I often find places to gather it which are near water which is my favourite place to be! 

But I think I also love it because Chalk is:

Made of the shells of sea creatures too tiny to see as individuals but whose a name is practically a song: cocolithophores!

Fossilised and turned to stone that can be hard enough to create cliffs but soft enough for those cliffs to be able to be scooped in the palm of your hand in some places. Chalk is cycles made visible. The duality of hard and soft, tiny and huge, lasting and fleeting.

The colour of bone and seafoam.

Thistle fluff and dandelion.

Chalk sings to me of North, of North winds and North waters . Perhaps because it reflects Winter's colours no matter the time of year. The crests of stormy waves and morning frost and blankets of bright, cold clouds.

Chalk is a texture, a way light is absorbed. The illuminating ghost of aliveness.