This body of drawings uses pigments made with found carbon-based materials—coal, graphite, ash and wildfire-derived charcoal—collected in the East and West Kootenays where coal and graphite mining take place and climate-induced wildfires are increasing in severity. Gathered during walks to mine and forest fire sites, some of these materials are elementally linked to flora and fauna from the primordial past: both coal and graphite are produced from ancient living matter that has undergone immense transformation over millennia and are remnants of once-thriving ecosystems. This project records a sustained effort to capture an elemental and animate quality embedded in these materials and is meant to evoke carbon’s duality as a life-bearing element and the effects of its accelerated use as a synthetic hydrocarbon. Primarily produced during a residency at Access Gallery (Vancouver, BC) in 2019, the exhibition text by curator Katie Belcher can be found here.