Summer Whites
White reminds me most of my mother, who, at the start of every summer, would bring out her long, flowy cotton white skirts and wear them everywhere. By everywhere, I mean around the house to clean, to the grocery store, to work, and to picnic dinners with neighbors and friends. She called long white skirts her version of summer "shorts” and would often pair them with a flowy top, also white. White, of course, goes with just about everything but is also prone to discoloration and stains. My friend Katie, a natural dye textile artist, looks forward to these lived-in whites as they can become a reusable canvas for color. I recently dunked two of my more grungy whites into her colorful dye pots to give a second life too. The rest of my white wardrobe I bleached and washed and hung on the line in the fresh June air. I
As an artist, I view white as such an essential part of my making art. Though I rarely paint directly with it, the amount of white pigment I use in my studio never ceases to surprise me. Even when working with watercolor ink, I will use white watercolor or sometimes gouache to add to the inks to create different hues and opacity. In addition to white watercolor tubes, I've recently become acquainted with acrylic ink, of which white is a favorite. I use it to contrast other colors and bring lines and shapes to life. I love the way white pops and can completely change the composition of a piece.
As a creator who is interested in energy, I'm well aware of the holiness associated with white. (I’m refraining from touching on the “purity” of white here as it relates too much to wedding dresses and virgins and that line of thinking I can no longer stomach, but I do love the clarity and cleansing properties associated with white.) My Reiki teacher will often cue the visualization of a purifying white light pouring into the heart or top of one's head. And once while in India, I stayed at an Ashram where the humanitarian and compassionate guru, known as Amma resides. Amma is a Sanskrit word for Mother, and she wore only white clothing to symbolize her humility and devotion. Seeing her white clothing made me think of my mother and her long white skirts.
In terms of making homemade white ink and paint, it’s actually a bit harder than one would think. You can purchase titanium oxide or mica, but white cannot be boiled out of plant matter like typical homemade inks. Instead, you must extract and pulverize biological or geological organic matter. Seashells, eggshells, limestone, or white clay all work. I haven’t tried yet. I think the difficulty of making white ink think this speaks to the specialness that is white and the unique forms it is found in nature. One of my favorite artists, Minnie Evans, composed works of color and images that were influenced by God and what he saw through his eyes. She used a lot of green. Green is god’s theme’s color,” she was quoted as saying. But while green was abundant in her works, she reserved white for small doses, special highlights, or accents. A good example of this is in her 1960 work, Untitled (starry skies and religious figures), which is at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
This use of white as a magnifying agent seems to align with the reality I observe in nature. White is a bit elusive, but so important for us to appreciate the subtle beauty of other natural features: Waves make when they crash on the beach, highlighting the blue of the water and the brown of the sand. So do clouds as they float in the blue sky. There are also white flowers that bring out green. Can’t forget bird feathers and snow, of course, which brings out the color of everything. My favorite piece I’ve used white is in Freedom, 2025, which has quartz-like veins running through abundant color mimicking white quartz veins found in rock formations.
According to spiritual traditions, wearing white highlights our soul rather than our body and I feel like this is at play in nature and in how I often work with color.
