Derecho Drawing

Born in Canada but currently residing in Japan. As a visual artist, Michelle Zacharias always seem to be on the outside looking in. Is she now a Canadian artist or a Japanese artist? She works primarily in natural pigments such as dust, coloured pencil, photography, and mixed media. Recent work shows the anthropocene and how dust is everywhere but affected in content and colour by individual environments and also how it affects colour in our daily environments. Why dust? Living and working in the shadow of a large chemical plant combined with winds bringing in "yellow dust" with attached particles of industrial pollution from China for many years resulted in allergies plaguing the artist throughout the year. Pollen from nature's flower and trees becomes an issue when covered in pollutants, and her artwork shows how that natural beauty might be sprinkled with spots of darkness that are partly natural and partly manmade. Dust sounds unappealing and ugly, but beautiful sunsets result from dust in the air. This dust becomes a natural pigment when traditional Japanese paint-making techniques are used. Black ink or coloured pencil can either spotlight or imitate the dust in artwork. In contemporary art, dust has been sprinkled in other mediums but rarely has it been as featured before Zacharias's art. Zacharias continues to explore how dust can be both used as a medium or suggested when using other mediums. Zacharias comes from a printmaking background and continues the detail used in her etchings regardless of the medium. Coloured pencil was a natural extension of that and also one that was much safer to use. Zacharias enjoys using unconventional materials and elevating their status to that of beauty.