Collaborating with Nature: How to Integrate Natural Elements into Your Work

I’ve spent a lot of time in classrooms talking about composition, value, and technique, but one of the biggest shifts in my own work didn’t come from any of that. It came from sitting on the ground behind my studio one afternoon and paying attention to what was right in front of me.

I picked up a handful of soil, mixed it with a little water, and brushed it onto a scrap of paper. The color surprised me. It wasn’t something I had in my paint box. It felt softer, a little warmer, and it behaved differently too. That small moment stuck with me. It wasn’t about making something finished. It was more about realizing that there was already so much material around me that I hadn’t been paying attention to.

Since then, working with natural elements has slowly worked its way into how I think about making. Not in a dramatic, all-at-once shift, but in a steady way. It changes how you look at things, how you move through spaces, even how you talk about your work.

Once you start noticing it, it’s hard to unsee. A walk becomes less about getting somewhere and more about what’s there. Leaves, stones, bits of wood, even things you would normally pass by without thinking twice. But there’s also a responsibility that comes with that. You start asking different questions. Should I take this? Is it okay to remove it from where it is? What happens to this material over time?

That awareness carries back into the studio. You slow down a bit. You pay attention to where things come from and how they behave. And when you share the work, you’re not just talking about the final piece, you’re talking about its path. That tends to resonate with people in a different way.

There’s also a practical side to it that you figure out pretty quickly. Natural materials don’t behave the same way as what you buy in a store. They hold moisture, they change, they break down. If you want them to last, you have to work with that. Drying things properly, sealing them, testing how they hold up over time. It’s not complicated, but it does take patience.

Pigment is where this really clicked for me. Grinding down soil or stone, mixing it into something usable…it feels slower than opening a tube of paint, but there’s something different in it. The color isn’t as predictable, but it has a depth to it that’s hard to replicate. And when you use it, you know exactly where it came from.

Working outside changes things too. Light shifts quickly, wind moves things around, nothing stays still for long. It forces you to adapt instead of trying to control everything. Sometimes that’s frustrating, but it also opens up different ways of working. You start responding instead of planning every step.

A lot of the work that comes out of that is temporary. It doesn’t last in the same way something in a studio does. At first that can feel like a loss, but it also changes how you think about value. The experience of the piece, the moment it exists in, becomes part of the work. And documentation becomes important in a different way. Photos, video, notes…they carry the piece forward even after it’s gone.

That’s also where things start to connect back to the business side. People are interested in process. They want to understand where things come from and how they’re made. Sharing those parts of the work creates a different kind of connection. It’s not just about the finished piece, it’s about the story around it.

Teaching this has been interesting too. Students often come in with a clear idea of what materials they’re “supposed” to use. When you introduce something like this, it shifts that a bit. They start thinking about materials differently, not just as tools but as part of the concept. It opens things up.

It also changes how you think about time. Natural materials don’t stay the same. They fade, they crack, they shift. Instead of trying to stop that, you can let it be part of the work. That can be uncomfortable at first, but it also takes some pressure off. Not everything has to stay fixed forever.

Over time, working this way has made me a little more flexible in general. When something doesn’t go as planned, it doesn’t feel like the end of it. It just becomes part of the process. That carries into other parts of the work too, even things that have nothing to do with natural materials.

If you’re curious about trying this, it doesn’t have to be a big shift. Just start small. Pick something up on a walk, bring it back, see what it does. Pay attention to how it changes over a few days. Let that lead you somewhere. It’s less about adding something new to your work and more about noticing what’s already there.