Artists and the Alchemy of Color

Hyperallergic Members are invited to join us on August 12, 2025, for a virtual conversation with two renowned artists about the materiality of paint: Rina Banerjee and Ellie Irons. The speakers will delve into the particularities of working with different pigments and surfaces, the process and chemistry behind creating their own paint, and how they choose the right color.

Moderated by Hrag Vartanian, this discussion will explore the evolving relationship between chemistry and color, from ancient pigment traditions to contemporary ecological practices. We’ll hear from the artists about the process of navigating the intersection of science, culture, and creativity in their work.

Read more about Ellie Irons in her interview with Lakshmi Rivera Amin on Hyperallergic: 10 Questions for an Artist Who Grows Her Own Pigments

The conversation will take place on Crowdcast on Tuesday, August 12, from 2 to 3pm (ET), and will be followed by an opportunity for members to ask questions.

As always, if you have any questions, please let us know at membership@hyperallergic.com.

See you on August 12!

About the Speakers

Rina Banerjee lives and works in New York City. Born in Kolkata, India, and having lived in Manchester and London before arriving in Queens, she draws on her multinational background and personal history as an immigrant to create work that focuses on ethnicity, race, migration, and American Diasporic histories. In 2018, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the San José Museum of Art co-organized her first solo retrospective, Make Me a Summary of the World, which toured North America. She also exhibits internationally, spanning 14 biennials worldwide, such as the 57th Venice Biennale, the Yokohama Triennale, and the Kochi Biennial. Her work is in many private and public collections, including the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, and the Brooklyn Museum. 

Ellie Irons is an artist, educator, and parent living and working on Mohican land in Troy, New York. Working across media — from watercolor paintings to un-lawning experiments — her practice combines socially engaged art and ecology fieldwork. Recent work involves collaborations about and with spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds), including co-founding the Next Epoch Seed Library and the Environmental Performance Agency. Ellie received a BA from Scripps College, an MFA from Hunter College, and completed her PhD in arts practice Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2021, researching forms of artistic practice that cultivate plant-human solidarity. Her book Feral Hues: A Guide to Painting with Weeds was published in 2023 by Publication Studio Hudson. She is currently the Co-Director of NATURE Lab at the Sanctuary for Independent Media.

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic, which he co-founded with his partner, Veken Gueyikian. In 2024, he was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale University and was awarded a Susan C. Larsen Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts Writing by the Rabkin Foundation.