I’m an Artist Who Uses Paints Made from Rocks

Every so often, I need to make a post at my website to introduce myself and share a bit about what I do. This helps keep my website relevant in the ever-important search engines. So hello! I’m an artist who uses paints made from rocks 🙂 I live in Kingston, Arkansas and have a studio in Alpena.

Paints Made From Rocks

Yep, you heard that right. If you do a quick search online for that term, what you’ll find are a lot of results that show the art of painting ON rocks. But not much at all about an artist using rocks to make paints. The former is quite common to do, and the latter is gaining a lot of momentum. A renaissance is booming as more and more artists learn about the pigments that can be found in rocks and minerals.

Here’s where you can see my art that I made using paints made from rocks.

Actually, pigments from rocks are still commonly used to make commercial paints. And before paints were available in tubes, it was the main source of pigments for all artists. Different areas of the world have different shades of ochres (some of these are quite famous, like these in France), and minerals and rocks from different places make different colors. I use the ones I can find right here at home in northwest Arkansas.

What About the Variety in Colors?

You might wonder what the colors look like. If you’ve heard of ochres, that’s how the colors I get from rocks look. They’re all earthy. In general, I get about 5 different colors and a lot of shades of those colors because each rock varies a little in how it leans towards brown. Here in the Ozarks, there’s no rocks that give me bright colors of any hue. And no blue at all.

I Use a Limited Palette

Most artists use a mixture of store-bought and handmade paints so that they can have a full palette of color to make the paintings they like. I’ve tried to use as little as I can of outside resources when I make my art. For watercolors, I don’t have to buy any other colors or pigments. With oils, I do buy titanium white pigment powder to make an opaque white paint. This does mean that I have to do without bright colors on my palette, though. And sometimes it means I can’t obtain life-like colors. Fortunately, a lot of what I like to paint has a lot of earthy tones. And some of the, like the birds of prey, are actually very close to the pigments I have on my palette.

Some of the Paintings I’ve Made Using Paint Made from Rocks

These are oil paintings. I made the paints by grinding the rocks (I also use soot) and mixing the powders with linseed oil. To get different values for each color, I use titanium white to adjust. You can most of the paintings I’ve done by visiting my portfolio page. The art is arranged by year of completion, so if you want to see earlier works, just click on the year in the menu.

Visit an Artist Who Uses Paints Made from Rocks

Now there’s a place to see work by an artist who uses paints made from rocks. My studio is conveniently located between Harrison, Branson, and the northwest Arkansas I49 corridor. Every Saturday is open studio, but if you’d like to make an appointment for other days, just get in touch.

Most of the time I work from home. On studio days, I’m usually working on a new painting, and I’ll finish it later at home. Then, when it’s finished, I’ll bring it back to hang on my gallery walls. I make the paints to sell, too, but right now there’s only watercolors available. To make oil paints uses a lot more pigment powder, and to make the paintings uses a lot more of the paint. So for the moment, I only make enough oil paints for my own use.

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Here’s a video of how I test the rocks I think might make good pigments:

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Author/Artist Info
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Madison Woods is a self-taught artist who moved to the Ozarks from south Louisiana in 2005. In 2018 she began experimenting with watercolor painting, using her local pigments. She calls them Paleo Paints. In 2023 she began her journey into the world of oil painting with those same pigments. Her paintings of the Ozark-inspired scenes feature exclusively the lightfast pigments foraged from Madison county, Arkansas. Her inspiration is nature – the beauty, and the inherent cycle of life and death, destruction and regeneration. Wild Ozark is also the only licensed ginseng nursery in Arkansas. Here’s the link for more information on the nursery end of life out here.

Online Portfolio

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