Artist Roxann Riedel crushes Ozark stone in search of the perfect pigments

In a way, Roxann Riedel stumbled into painting — or more accurately, into the colors hidden inside the rocks beneath her feet. A self-taught artist, she had been drawing her whole life, but it took a rock in her driveway to change her artistic direction.

She and her husband, Robert, moved from southern Louisiana to a 160-acre wooded property near Kingston, Arkansas, in 2005. They were originally looking for rolling hills, streams, a good place to grow ginseng, and seclusion. The rocky Ozark soil just came with the package.

“The rocks break open on our driveway, and the color just kind of spills out in powders,” Roxann said. “That fascinated me for years, but I was working full time… so, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to actually investigate.”

In 2018, Roxann finally sat down to see if she could do anything with the colors in those rocks. “I rubbed some powder on paper,” she said. “It made color on the paper, and that was enough to start me down a rabbit hole.” Roxann began digging into methods of making pigments, and the rabbit hole just got deeper.

Fine dust settles across her work surface as she crushes stone, revealing colors that have existed quietly in the earth for thousands of years.

“It starts with a rock that you break into smaller pieces, then continue breaking it down, crushing it until you have powder,” she said, explaining her process. “Then I take that powder and wash it in jars by shaking it up and pouring the colored water off into another jar. That settles, and once it does, I pour the clear water off and let the remaining sediment dry. That sediment is the pigment, and that’s what I’ll use to make either a watercolor or an oil paint. It’s pretty labor-intensive, but it’s definitely a labor of love.”

Once the pigment is isolated, Roxann adds ingredients to create a paint that will adhere to paper: gum arabic, honey and a water solution for watercolors, linseed or black walnut oil for oil paints. The hues she’s able to create are warm, earthy tones pulled right from the Arkansas earth.

“The colors I have from these pigments work very well with things from nature, because they came from nature,” Roxann said.

These natural hues are exactly what she needs for her subject matter. Roxann’s vivid, sun-warmed landscapes, pastoral scenes, and wildlife portraits seem lit with energy drawn directly from the earth, her style evoking the movement and transition of the natural world.

“I just feel, as a whole, people are very disconnected from the entirety of nature,” she explained. “They see curated nature. When you go to a park, everything is curated. Out here, it’s very wild. And there’s life in depth. I think that’s one reason why I’m fascinated with birds of prey.”

One recurring theme in Roxann’s work is the raptors on her property. Owls, eagles and hawks of all varieties wing their way through her paintings.

“They are beautiful, and they’re deadly. It’s interesting to watch an exchange with a bird of prey trying to catch food,” she said. “You know, that animal it’s trying to catch wants to survive just as much as the bird wants to survive. And I am not on either side in that little endeavor. I don’t pull for one. I’m pulling for both of them, because they both just want to live.”

Roxann hopes that her work will inspire others to find ways to get creative with items in their surroundings. She sometimes offers her watercolor paints for sale, and she teaches how to make pigments from the land. Through virtual classes available at Skool.com, she guides others through the process of creating pigments from natural materials. In that space, she is known by her artist name, Madison Woods — also the name featured on her website, wildozark.com.

Roxann said that a big motivation for her paint-making is knowing her art is not dependent on store-bought materials. Resourcefulness, she admitted, is part of her identity. Homesteading on her property in the woods makes her feel a bit like a hermit, which is exactly the lifestyle she wants.

“I like being able to have my own resources right here,” Roxann affirmed. “If I absolutely had to, I could get oil with a press from the black walnuts that we have here and have an oil that would be useful for making oil paints.”

When asked what artistic accomplishment she takes the most pride in, Roxann explains it is how far she has come as a self-taught artist and pigment-maker.

“My first painting was really not very good at all,” she confessed with a laugh. “The excitement that I could actually make paint is what motivated me to keep trying to do better.”

For Roxann, the heart of the stone continues to reveal itself, one color at a time. “It just feels very satisfying to look at the canvas after I’m done with it and see those colors, all of which came from rocks, soot, bone, or whatever I’ve used from right here… It’s just fascinating to me,” Roxann reflected. “And I don’t think that’ll ever go away.”

Discover more about Roxann’s art at wildozark.com, where you can explore her work and find details about upcoming classes. Upcoming dates include April 12 at Fire Om Earth in Eureka Springs and May 30 at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock.