My goal is to help people reconnect their lives and their homes to the land we inhabit.
Can I eat this?
That is the phrase that kicked off my journey creating abstract artwork from seasonal indigenous plants.
In 2018 my husband and I sold everything and bought a sailboat. We spend 6-8 months every year exploring the nooks and bays of British Columbia's remote coastline.
Along the way I became interested in the idea of being able to sustain myself from the land and sea. At first I could recognize salal berries, salmon berries, and oregon grapes; then mushrooms, miner’s lettuce, and nodding onions. Before I knew it I was picking plums on a hike and digging up wild carrots with my dog. I discovered the world of seaweed and learned to fish for lingcod from my paddleboard. I started seeing food everywhere.
Growing up my mom worked hard to make sure my brother and I didn’t know we were poor. But at times it was impossible to hide. My therapist would tell you that this is likely where my interest in foraging has really come from: a lack of food and financial security in my childhood.
Foraging creates the piece of mind that no matter what life throws at me, if I can feed my family from the land we’ll be ok.
Today not only do I eat from the land, I also make artwork from the land with the goal of helping people reconnect their homes and lives to the land that we inhabit.
Can I paint with this?
On my favourite island in my favourite market there was a book – "Make Ink" by Jason Logan of The Toronto Ink Company. I bought the book and hurried home, too excited to actually read it before throwing some salal berries in a pot of boiling water to see what would happen.
Since then I have created paints from some of my very favourite plants and fungi: artist conk mushrooms, huckleberries, salal berries, giant kelp fronds, plums, sea lettuce, blue spruce, and red osier dogwood.
Each piece of artwork comes with the coordinates of where the raw paint pigments were collected, so you can visit the plant and its ecosystem if you like, as well information on its ecological and historical significance, and its documented medicinal and culinary uses.