Art and Alchemy: Traditional Painting Materials and Techniques
DAVID CRANSWICK, PhD (1999)
David is a painter who studied with the visionary painter Cecil Collins. As he describes, his work at The Prince’s School “was concerned with the re-appraisal of traditional craft skills and the significance of the raw materials which, taken together, have the potential to reveal Beauty through the significance of forms.” His research demonstrated the working methods of European painters between the 13th and 17th centuries. It was “a study of the integral relationship between the techniques of painting, the materials employed, and the creative process, with a constant awareness of the symbolic meaning at their heart. This knowledge is a product of a wisdom tradition, transmitted through the centuries via the traditional arts, going back to antiquity.” For David, alchemy has been the doorway through which the mysteries of form and its expression through beauty are revealed. He writes, “Alchemy cannot be taught any more than one can paint alchemical paintings. The mysteries of alchemy can be studied and contemplated, but the spirit of alchemy reveals itself through the practical process of the work.”
He returns each year to teach The School’s course in Methods and Materials, guiding students in extracting “the pure blue pigment out of lapis lazuli, or obtaining precious carmine from the cochineal beetle, or collecting soot and mixing with a little glue to make an excellent ink” among other techniques, all the while conveying his experience of the act of realising art as “simultaneously ritualistic—both in preparation and execution, symbolic in technique and content, and of the nature of a spiritual discipline in terms of alchemy.”
