Untitled ^{ca. 2003}

Tim Ingold suggests a return to the alchemists in order to gain an under­standing of the true potential of materials. In emulating the historian James Elkins he proposes that we have to forget modern chemistry in order to reach the natural essence of materials. Before the introduction of synthetic paints for example, painting was a ­fundamentally alchemistic occupation.

To paint was to bring together, into a single movement, a certain material mixture, loaded onto the brush, with a certain bodily gesture enacted through the hand that held it. But the science of chemistry can no more define the ­mixture than can the science of anatomy define the gesture.

^{A Wild Thing, p. 123}