There is nothing more inspiring than making a chalk ground from scratch with natural glues, grinding pigments on a slab into paint, or experimenting with resins and oils to create a painting medium. Working closely with the base materials imbued an instinct on my manufacturing process. When formulating recipes, I often have a sense that this blend needs something and instead of relying on cold dry chemical formulas, I often find the answers by following my sixth sense.
Over the past decades at the Sinopia, this has led me down the path of teaching paint making, formulating an all natural milk paint, all the way to what I consider achieving the pinnacle of my accomplishments: creating a recipe for the bole clay that is used in water gilding techniques.
While taking on this challenge, I found very few formulas and the available information was more anecdotal than specific. Most recipes did not have accurate or any measurements and listed the ingredients as possible components without giving details. After months of trial and error, in an almost magical moment, the ingredients melded together to yield a rich creamy paste that forms the basis for highly polished gold leaf surfaces.
In 2021 my wife and I moved to Palm Springs, where I operate Sinopia out of a warehouse that has become my art supply kitchen. Like a chef in a kitchen, I find cooking the materials a deeply satisfying process and I feel honored to have the opportunity to add a small chapter to the art materials history.