Foraged Pigment Art — New Works by Hayley Dayis & Alexander Fals
Artists Hayley Dayis and Alexander Fals present their newest body of work at Nu Movement, where paintings are made not from tubes of paint, but from rare pigments painstakingly foraged by hand from Colombia’s volcanic soils.
Unlike synthetic hues that can be bought in bulk, these pigments are scarce, site-specific, and irreproducible. A single stroke of maroon or lavender on canvas may represent a color that exists nowhere else on earth, collected only once, in one season, from one patch of land. This scarcity, transformed into luminous artworks, imbues each painting with a singularity that cannot be replicated or mass-produced.
“We treat color as something precious, not disposable,” say Dayis and Fals. “Each pigment is a fragment of place, of geology, of memory. To paint with them is to honor their rarity and their story.”
⸻
More than environmental art: a vision of care for all life
What sets Dayis and Fals apart from many environmentally oriented painters and thinkers is not just their commitment to earth, but their insistence on love for the whole of nature—including humanity. While some ecological work frames people as intruders upon the planet, their philosophy begins with reciprocity rather than rejection.
For them, the act of painting is both ecological and humanistic: a way to slow down time, recover kinship, and affirm that caring for rivers, soils, and pigments is inseparable from caring for people themselves.
⸻
Pigments that tell the story of land
Collected from Andisol, Colombia’s volcanic soils rich in ash and glass, the duo’s palette includes rare blacks, rust oranges, greens, yellows, and soft pinks. Each is ground, sifted, and bound by hand into paint, echoing prehistoric traditions while engaging contemporary audiences with issues of ecology, scarcity, and cultural memory .
Their shared practice arises from lived connection: Dayis, a Rochester-born painter and writer who turned to earth pigments after environmental study abroad, and Fals, whose Colombian family passed down pigment-making knowledge, merging ecology with magical realism.
This exhibit may be viewed by attending classes and events at Nu, or by appointment. Please contact our Exhibition Coordinator Danielle Merrill if you have any questions or would like to make an appointment to view this show.