Robin Whitfield
Artwork by Robin Whitfield
Artwork by Robin Whitfield
As the artist Robin Whitfield slowly paddles through a dense wetland in Grenada, Mississippi, she glides past ancient cypress trees rising out of the smooth water, and the sunlight appears dappled on her kayak. A dragonfly lights upon her sketchpad, and she stops to observe its delicate wings. Around her, a pair of butterflies flitter, dipping and soaring before flying away. Birdsong fills the air, along with an occasionally croaking frog. For Whitfield, it’s like going back in time to a place unspoiled by modern life. Yet, the swamp she visits almost daily is located halfway between Jackson, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee, right in the middle of so much busy human life. The environment is not simply a background for the artist. She notices and reveres the nature that surrounds her, and she has made it her mission to foster that connection in others, too.
While artmaking has been a constant in her life, Whitfield said she stumbled into nature by accident.
When she was attending college at Delta State University in Cleveland, painting under the mentorship of Sammy Britt, Whitfield responded to a job opportunity. The Grenada School District wanted an artist to paint the school’s interior. “I put in the lowest bid by far,” she said, and spent the next five years painting ancient cultures on four different hallways for $950. “I found out later that the next lowest bid was $10,000.”
While working on the project, Whitfield found an old building in downtown Grenada, and with financial help from her parents, she purchased it. The building was an ideal spot for an art gallery, with an apartment upstairs. And three blocks away was a 300-acre swamp owned by the city. “People called it ‘dump lake,’” she said. “It wasn’t uncommon for people to trash old couches, dead dogs, and such. I started going there every day and began to pay attention to the abundant wildlife."
Inspired by other Mississippi artists like Walter Anderson and Wyatt Waters, Whitfield received a kayak as a gift and began taking it out every day, along with a small watercolor kit. “Painting was like a daily meditation for me,” she said.
Then one day, she had a breakthrough. While painting in her boat, a sudden gust of wind blew the paper she was working on onto the water’s surface. “To the naked eye, the water looked very clear,” she said. But when she picked up the paper, it was coated in a chocolate brown color. “I had not realized there was a translucent sheen on the water. I was transfixed. I realized the sheen came from the oils from rotting plants. I kept dipping the paper in the water, learning, by accident, that I could manipulate it.”
While artmaking has been a constant in her life, Whitfield said she stumbled into nature by accident.
That revelation set Whitfield on a path she never imagined. “I began to wonder where other colors may come from. Native Americans had color in their art. Where did they get those colors? I had an almost childlike glee as I began to experiment.” She soon began incorporating foraged pigments from berries, flowers, and leaves into her palette—discovering their distinct chemical properties along the way.
“Dirt and burnt grass make my favorite black,” she said. “Berry juice and mud will create a very raw color…spinach leaves, beetroots, and strawberries all adhere well to watercolor paper.”
Now, when painting the wildlife she observes, Whitfield begins with a color in mind. “When I look at a great blue heron, I think about what color I’ll use,” she said. “The pepper vine is the perfect color. I use trial and error by squishing the color onto the paper.”
For her series, Seasons of the Cypress, she created twelve images with birds, plants, and insects that tell a story. “Nature offered every color I needed,” she said. “I like to tell people that plants are nature’s perfect magic marker.” Her Mississippi Palette series uses mineral colors connected to particular locations in Mississippi.
Saving the Swamp
After college, Whitfield stayed in Grenada, painting and selling work in her gallery while maintaining her daily practice of visiting the swamp outside of her apartment.
In 2009, Whitfield assembled a volunteer citizens/friends group to protect and promote the wetland she’d developed such a relationship with, while working to establish trails and a wildlife observation deck. In 2010, the city officially dubbed the area the Chakchiuma Swamp Natural Area, honoring a Native American tribe once located in the upper Yazoo region. The citizen’s group gained non-profit status and is now known as the Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp. Whitfield is the executive director and visionary for the group’s ongoing activities, events, and projects. Introducing the swamp to children is a major role of the organization, which facilitates school field trips and an annual summer camp for kids. As a result of their work, the Chakchiuma has also become a haven for other local artists, photographers, and nature lovers.
A day came, in 2016, that Whitfield went to the swamp to paint, as she had for over a decade, and discovered ribbons hanging on trees, signaling that they were to be harvested for timber. “The city was in dire economic straits and wanted to sell off the timber in the swamp for income,” she recalled. “I called City Hall, and they said, ‘they didn’t think I’d mind.’”
[Read this: A City's Stories, En Plein Air]
But Whitfield did mind. The loss of the trees would adversely affect the swamp’s delicate and precious ecosystem. She learned that the city would net $40 to $80 per tree, adding up to a $300,000 price tag. Whitfield proposed “selling” the trees in a kind of symbolic adoption fundraiser, promising the city they would receive market value. They gave her eight weeks. She started a GoFundMe campaign and raised close to $30,000 in three weeks, with support from all over the state. The cause captured the attention of a local businessman who agreed to match all donations in exchange for honoring a Grenada law enforcement officer, who had loved the outdoors, and who had recently died in the line of duty. As a result, in 2017, the property was officially dubbed the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve and the city agreed to a sixty-year lease with the Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp to pay off the $300,000.
“I used my power as a visual storyteller, by sharing my art, so everyone would understand what they would lose,” said Whitfield. Since the beginning of the program, which is still ongoing, hundreds of trees have been tagged by student volunteers, who then send donors the coordinates of their adopted tree with an invitation to visit the swamp.
The Artist Becomes the Teacher
Today, Whitfield shares the knowledge and wisdom she has gathered from the swamp as an artist, and now a certified Master Naturalist, with others—teaching earth color workshops all across the region. “I love it when people who don’t identify as artists try painting in nature. Natural pigments have the ability to wake people up. I try to remind them that we can connect to nature through play—and art is play.”
“We explore wherever we are,” she went on, “looking for colors in the most unlikely of places. It could be a weed growing through a crack in an alleyway. We are simply looking for colors to make a connection with nature and our ancestors.”
