Ah Spring, The sun is out longer each day, the snow is melting all away, soon we'll see colours at play, as spring puts on her bright display.

Ok so I am a better painter than poet :) but it's always a joy to see colours in nature. This winter I have been painting using lots of colour in my animals, yet the colours are often hidden, subtle just like they are outside. I have been studying if any of the rocks in our area have pigment, but while it seems that on the coast there are many, here there are few to none in any in any amount. So I looked to nature. I went for a walk and noticed pale green beard lichen on the trees and collected it to see if I could draw the colour out to make paint or dye. It's a painstaking process as after steeping the lichen, i have chosen to allow the water to evaporate naturally to leave the coloured residue behind, I didn't know if heat would damage the pigment colour. With the few colours I have found so far, all light greens and browns, I will be lucky if I get enough pigment to paint a small 5X7.

I am hoping spring will be more fruitful, yet while the colours are easier to spot they may be equally as elusive. Pigment is not dye, it's easy to draw dye from flowers and growing things, but this water soluble colour is not the same as paint pigment. Weirdly, watercolours use as their base powders that don't dissolve in water, but instead suspend in a solution that binds them to the paper. Who knew!

I have never been limited by colour. I love to add vibrancy to images even when there is none (or little) in the original photo. But finding the colours that resonate with my home, then using them in non-traditional ways, will bring a new sense of authenticity to some of my works during my new series "Celebrating Tumbler Ridge Photography and Wildlife".

Meanwhile, check out my latest work - Wild Wolf - where my love of using surreal colours is definitely on display. Maybe this wolf is also dressed out to celebrate spring?