Botanical Traces

The days are slowly growing longer, but the light remains low, hovering as if suspended. I paint in the morning, in the stillness of a cold workshop, my wool sweater pushed up over my wrist.

The brush glides across the fabric, soaking the fibers in a deep hue- cachou brown, rich and golden like tree bark warmed by the sun.

Layers of color build up, uneven and shifting. On the surface of the cloth, foliage takes shape, somewhere between abstraction and memory. I work with stencils, but the hand always wanders, letting the material find its own way. Each pattern is unique- a trace of the moment, an echo of pressed herbariums or late-summer shadows streching across the ground.

Beside me, the dye jar sits, thick and dense. I stir the mixture the way one stirs jam, watching the hues slowly develop. There’s something organic about this process, a natural rythm, almost instinctive.

I don’t know what this fabric will become. Maybe a shawl, a tied kerchief, a fragment of something larger. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the gesture, the plant-based ink sinking in, and that familiar sense of being connected to the world through color and texture.