BCAlteronce, we’re so glad to finally feature you. You’ve taken two of our retreats now, so you already know our little world well. Let’s start at the beginning: what first pulled you toward color as the central preoccupation of your life and work?

AGI’ve always been fascinated by color, even before I understood why. As a child, I remember being captivated by stained glass in church, Saturday-morning cartoons, Lil’ Kim’s “Crush on You” music video, and the way light could completely transform an ordinary object. Over time, I realized I wasn’t simply attracted to beautiful colors. I was curious about where they came from and how they were used. That question has stayed with me for decades.

Eventually, it became larger than a painting. I began asking: Where does blue exist before it becomes paint? How old is red? What is the relationship between light, matter, and perception? Color became less of a subject and more of a way of understanding the world. Today, my paintings, films, and research all grow from that same curiosity. They’re different paths leading toward the same destination.

BCYou’ve talked about learning that the earliest cave paintings were made from gemstones (red ochre, jasper, charcoal from burnt wood) and how human beings mined that matter and turned it into dry medium, then wet medium, then the paints and dyes we use on fabric. That lineage from earth to color is exactly where natural dyers live too. Can you speak to that shared origin? What does it mean to you to work with pigment that carries the history of the planet?

AGOne of the most profound discoveries in my research was realizing that the history of painting begins with geology.

Long before artists bought tubes of paint, people were collecting minerals, crushing stones, burning wood into charcoal, and transforming the earth into image. Pigment is literally ancient geology made visible.

That completely changed how I think about materials.

When I hold a piece of jasper or lapis lazuli, I’m holding something that formed millions of years before humanity existed. Eventually those same materials became cave paintings, Renaissance masterpieces, textiles, and contemporary paintings.

Natural dye artists understand this intuitively. Whether the color comes from indigo leaves, madder root, cochineal, or the minerals beneath our feet, we’re participating in an incredibly long conversation between humans and the earth. Color carries memory.

Pigment is literally ancient geology made visible.

BCYou’ve said the transformation of matter, time, and color is embedded in the gemstones you use. Natural dye is its own kind of alchemy: plant into color, color into cloth. When you’re working, do you feel yourself as a maker of color, or more as someone in relationship with materials that are already alive with it?

AGI don’t think I invent color. I think I collaborate with it. The gemstones, glass, pigments, and resins already possess extraordinary histories and properties. My role is to create the conditions where those histories become visible in new ways. That’s why abstraction is so central to my work; it allows transformation to happen in the viewer’s mind. A gemstone becomes pigment. Pigment becomes paint. Paint becomes light. Light becomes an experience inside the viewer. The material is constantly changing form, but its history never disappears. In many ways, I think artists and natural dyers are translators. We’re helping matter tell another chapter of its story.

BCYou came through two of our retreats. What drew you to natural dye specifically, and did anything about working with plant color (its unpredictability, its living quality) shift how you think about pigment in your own studio practice?

AGI’ve spent years studying mineral color, so I became curious about the other great lineage of color: the botanical world.

The Botanical Colors retreats gave me an opportunity to immerse myself in the world of natural dyes while experiencing the cultures and landscapes that have sustained these traditions for generations. At the Mothership in Tangier, we gathered plants from the garden and returned to the studio to transform them into color. That simple act created a much deeper connection between the landscape, the material, and the finished work.

In Bali, visiting Threads of Life gave me an even greater appreciation for the process. Seeing the relationships that different communities have cultivated with local plants, their land, and ancestral dyeing traditions made me realize that natural color isn’t simply extracted from nature. It emerges through a deep understanding of place, patience, and generations of accumulated knowledge.

Those experiences expanded my understanding of what a pigment can represent. Color is never just a material. It holds the memory of a landscape, the knowledge of a culture, and the passage of time.

It reinforced something I’ve been thinking about for years: color isn’t something we control. It’s something we enter into a relationship with.

Color isn’t something we control. It’s something we enter into a relationship with.

BCYour feature COLOR took you from Holi in India to Mardi Gras to Morocco’s spice markets to the Northern Lights, exploring how color shapes culture and creativity around the world. What did making that film teach you that the studio couldn’t? Did you encounter dye and pigment traditions along the way that stayed with you?

AGFilming COLOR allowed me to experience color as ceremony, identity, celebration, spirituality, architecture, food, clothing, and landscape. I realized color is never merely visual. It’s emotional, cultural, and sacred.

The pigments of Holi will stay with me for the rest of my life, and many of the spices we came across in Morocco were also used for dyeing fabrics. I brought these experiences and newfound knowledge back with me. Painting taught me how to observe color. Travel taught me how people live inside it.

BCYou’re now in production on COLOR in Nature. Without giving too much away, where is this one taking you, and how is nature reframing what color means to you? We imagine the botanical world has to enter this chapter.

AGFilming has taken us to extraordinary places, from the monarch butterfly migration in Mexico and glaciers in Iceland to the Rainbow Mountains and the weaving communities of Pitumarca, Peru. In Pitumarca, we met master weavers who, using techniques passed down through generations, continue to dye wool with cochineal insects. Seeing those vibrant reds emerge was a powerful reminder that color is not simply extracted, but cultivated through an intimate relationship with the land.

Another unforgettable experience was visiting the more than 400-year-old indigo dye pits in Kano, Nigeria. Meeting master dyers and witnessing a process that has remained remarkably consistent for centuries gave me a profound respect for the patience, craftsmanship, and cultural memory embedded in every dyed textile. Whether in the Andes or West Africa, I was struck by how these traditions preserve not only techniques, but entire ways of understanding the natural world.

Across all of these landscapes, one realization kept returning to me: nature wasn’t designed to be beautiful for us. Color evolved for communication, attraction, camouflage, migration, survival. As artists and natural dyers, we’re not inventing color. We’re entering into a complex relationship with systems that existed for millions of years before us.

Painting taught me how to observe color. Travel taught me how people live inside it.

BCYour work holds so much at once: monochromatic painting, astrophysics, the origins of the universe, and questions of identity and Blackness. How do all of these live together on a single surface? And where does the earthbound, material history of pigment meet the cosmic scale you’re always reaching toward?

AGFor me, they’re never separate. The same carbon found in our bodies was forged inside distant stars. The iron that gives red ochre its color also exists in our blood. The minerals in my paintings were formed through geological processes that are inseparable from the evolution of our planet. So when I think about identity, I’m thinking at multiple scales simultaneously.

When I’m making work, I don’t think of myself as making paintings as a Black artist. I think of myself simply as an artist asking fundamental questions about color, light, matter, and our place in the universe. My lived experience inevitably informs the work, but my intention is to create paintings that speak to something universal and connect us through our shared origins.

The monochromatic surface becomes a meeting place where those timelines overlap. A single color can hold personal memory, cultural history, and planetary and cosmic history all at once.

That perspective has made me feel both smaller and much more connected to the world around me.

BCYou’ve called yourself a lifelong student, still visiting museums every week, still asking questions. What are you most curious about right now, in color or anything else?

AGI’m fascinated by relationships with color that we haven’t fully understood yet. Lately, I’ve been studying glass, ceramics, natural dyes, color theory, geology, astronomy, physics, even sound.

I’m especially interested in whether color has deeper connections to vibration, frequency, perception, and consciousness than we’ve traditionally understood. Whether those connections ultimately prove to be scientific, philosophical, or poetic, I think they’re worth exploring.

Curiosity has always been the engine of my practice. The day I stop asking questions is probably the day I stop making art.

BCIf you could imagine a dream project or collaboration with no limits, whether material, planetary, or cosmic, what would it look like?

AGI’ve always dreamed of creating an earthwork or site-specific installation, something that merges seamlessly with the landscape rather than simply occupying it. Since I’ve been working extensively with natural minerals and dyes, creating a work that can be experienced outdoors feels like a natural next step in my practice.

I’d also like to expand my practice into metal sculpture and sound chambers that explore color through multiple senses. I’m interested in creating spaces where light, sound, material, and the surrounding environment come together, inviting people to experience color not just as something they see, but as something they encounter physically and emotionally.

BCWhere can our community follow your work, see the films, and experience the paintings in person this year?

AGThis year I’m continuing production on COLOR in Nature while preparing several new bodies of work for upcoming exhibitions. People can follow the journey on Instagram, where I share new paintings and life happenings. My website is also the best place to stay updated on exhibitions, screenings, and future projects.

More than anything, I hope people leave the work looking at the world differently. Once you begin paying attention to color, it’s impossible to stop seeing it.