Collaborating with Matter Rather Than Mastering it

Marina Chisty What was, What is, What lingers 2025

A few years ago, my relationship to painting dramatically changed. The evolution was put in motion when I began making my own paints, not only as an eco-friendly approach to painting but because I was curious to strip the process down to its most essential raw elements. This in turn led me on the journey to research the long human history of pigment use and its cultural significance.

The real impact, however, came with the first experiments using these pigments in my studio. I assumed that pigments, once mixed with water and a binder, would dissolve in a unified manner. On the contrary, rather than producing a smooth, evenly distributed, predictable substance – the paint fragmented and resisted. While some of the pigment particles clumped and refused to dissolve, others dispersed in an unpredictable fashion. As the mixture was poured onto the canvas, the pigments danced, settled, broke apart and reconfigured in ways I hadn’t intended.

I began to think of painting not as an act of mastery, but as a means of participation in a world already in motion.

Matter Vs Material

What is the difference between matter and material? Petra Lange-Berndt is a leading researcher in the field of material studies in art history. She very eloquently clarified the difference between matter and material for me through her work on the Materiality edition from the Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art series. In Materiality she states that matter can be defined as the fundamental substance of the physical world elements that exist independently of human perception or intervention. This may be in the form of rock formations, water, or living organisms. On the other hand, material is matter that has been transformed, engaged with, or contextualized within a specific framework. It is matter that has been manipulated, imbuing it with purpose and meaning.

A Shift in Perception

This shift made me realize that the materials were not passively receiving my gesture; they were responding. They were animated by, and interacting with nature's forces and the canvas surface. I no longer saw myself as apart from the materials, directing them toward a final image. I had become inseparable from them, a part of a dynamic interaction where agency was shared, not owned. This new awareness allowed the materials to be recognized as active participants in a collaborative creative pursuit.

Materials Are Not Tools, But Agents in Motion

Art doesn’t merely capture change but performs it. Through painting, I no longer see my role as an artist to dictate but to facilitate, to allow materials to reveal their own logic while guiding the process in response. I am much less interested in the finished image that has been created, than I am in the unfolding event of its becoming. My research showed me that materials do not have inherent agency on their own but acquire it through their relationships within broader systems. Writer, artist and philosopher, Manuel DeLanda, expresses in his book A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, that material properties emerge from interactions rather than being predetermined. For example, a rock is not simply a rock in isolation. It’s part of an assemblage influenced by forces, erosion, and chemical composition. The rock's characteristics are not intrinsic qualities but arise from how it exists within its environment.

My understanding of this representation, in the context of creativity and art, is that an artwork can never be a static object. It is representative of a material event. In my work I see it as a convergence of pigments, surfaces, natural forces, and surrounding environmental conditions.

The artwork then continues to change and evolve as it moves from site to site, is viewed in new spaces, in different lighting, and interacts with the changing environment. The material elements never cease to be agents in motion. With time material oxidizes, buckles, bends, contorts, cracks, and shifts in form.

The painting is not an inert artifact, but a living document of material behavior of becoming.

My approach to making art will never be the same again. This shift in perspective opened my mind to what it is to interact with and collaborate with materials. As I work in my studio I now envisage myself as a creator of an event. An event that will not only be experienced by the viewers of the work, but also by myself as the artist as I embrace the unpredictable nature of working with raw pigments, water and natural forces.