In the spring of 2021, I was invited by Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, PhD candidate of the Research Institute for History and Art History (OGK) at the University of Utrecht, to contribute experimental local botanical lake pigments for her publication Planting Pigments (2021). This project consists of over 50 colours, including a series by 15 early modern scholarly women who contributed & are involved in the forefront of research applying performative methods that can be best described as historical ‘remakings’ or ‘reworkings’.

My contribution was locally picked lupine, wisteria, Bermuda buttercup, & bugambilia from my garden & nearby hiking trails.

This project stems from Jessies’s PhD research, part of which delves into the practical making of botanical watercolours from the early modern period, which roughly refers to the period from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. It tries to understand how image-makers in early modern Europe worked with the “colour technology” of their time to visualize the plant world.