Nettle ink

 

 

 

Boiling ingredients to make ink requires patience. Like making a sauce, it can go lumpy, evaporate, or burn and spoil. All that stirring for nothing. Take your eye off it and your liquid and work, may be lost. 

I have just peeled apart notebook pages trying to decipher notes scribbled while cooking nettle ink. Before I began, I imagined deep Hooker’s Green or Chromium Oxide. A mute khaki perhaps, but the ink I produced has the colour, consistency and covering power of sputum. An amazing green in its way but would I want to paint with it? 

Hilarious to think of the efforts I made gathering the ingredients: gloved in tight pinks picking nettles, arms out with funnels catching rainwater, airing Chardonnay dregs to vinegar, panning the sea for salt, clawing at a cherry tree for gum, and then, finally, standing over three hours of steam to reduce a gallon of nettle leaves and rainwater to two 60ml bottles of ink. One of which spilled in the bottling. 

All was not lost. After a deep sigh, I peered into the empty pot to find a most wonderful abstract bubbling at the bottom. I stole it from the stove, took it outside and let I cool. Held it up to the sun. The sun approved.

I stared into the pot, angled it to the light. The scum at the bottom shifted. A dozen bubbles popped to form an ochre crust. Images erupted in the tondo: Atlas held an ancient world aloft. A monkey dangled from an arc. 

Heat has a profound effect on colour. Ochre turned bright yellow. The last of the liquid rolled and dried into golden rivulets, leaving clusters of amber behind. I tried to scrape and gather the colour. It was too thin. I was too impatient. I let it cool and took it to the studio. 

Sun poured through the sky light and illuminated the yellow pot. I photographed it and realised that this stain, this unimaginable image, futility made manifest – all that remained of my nettle brew – was the reason I had spent the afternoon simmering. Not the ink nor my spoon made yellow. 

 

I believe images pre-exist. They wish to be witnessed, that is their purpose. Ours is to find and reveal them. Our hands move so that images can materialise. I try not to judge the pictures that come to me. If I pay attention, I learn from them. Without all the gathering and caring and taking time, there would have been no surprise ending.

​

© David Begley 2023