Shirin Rafie (b. 1989, Singapore) is an artist and paintmaker based in Singapore. Her practice explores the relationship between a modern artist and nature through making with natural material. She is the co-founder of Wild Dot, a Singapore-based studio that makes paints and hosts workshops with natural pigments. She uses what her surroundings provides – fibres from tree bark, colour pigments from plants, and sometimes earth pigments from the beach.
Interestingly, her other life as a digital illustrator has brought her to work on the stretching seams of digital and traditional material canvases. Through material study and traditional craft practice with local plants, she hopes to share on the relevance and value of knowing material in an industrial age, and how growing and working directly with nature can be a joyful way of artmaking. Making the artworks small is key, since material used takes time to grow. It also ensures that the harvesting of material from my garden is done so sustainably, in a way that allows the plant to regenerate for future use. I hope that this self-sufficient way of practicing my art can be used to raise questions about our dependence on nature as artists, and consider how the idea of working small, within natural environmental limits, may be translated into other aspects of our lives.
‘Garden Gifts’ is a series of mini artworks I made from material in my studio garden. Every part of each piece - paper, paints, frame - is made from plants I have taken care of, harvested from, and finally crafted into these pieces.
Making the artworks small is key, since material used takes time to grow. It also ensures that the harvesting of material from my garden is done so sustainably, in a way that allows the plant to regenerate for future use. I hope that this self-sufficient way of practicing my art can be used to raise questions about our dependence on nature as artists, and consider how the idea of working small, within natural environmental limits, may be translated into other aspects of our lives.
