L’atelier - Julien Peltier

When I arrived in Geneva almost ten years ago, I took my backpack, my tent, and something to write with... In search of bringing a more profound meaning to my life, where the powerful energies bound and link me to these enchanting places. Middle Earth, with its great parapets, hence opened its doors to me.

My steps guided me to the soil and my courage. Steadfast in contemplation, I grasped the very essence of the earth that would cherish my future intentions.

During this pilgrimage through fields of lush grass, along paths with eternal ferns, from small hamlet train stations to the decks of paddle boats, from the quay of Hermance to the shores of Solothurn

From the Schaffhausen falls falls to the verdant peaks of Appenzell, from the gushing hot water gorges of Tamina to the majestic peaks of the Grisons, from the Foroglio waterfalls to the cradle of fairies in Leukerbad... Whilst dozing off at the foot of a century-old chestnut tree, rooted on a balcony of Gambarogno, overlooking Lake Maggiore, and resonating with the Monte Verita hill, I heard the message of all worlds and, at that absolute moment of supreme consciousness, my life unfolded right before my eyes as I drew it on the lands of Vallotton, Giacometti, Erni, and Hodler.

I embraced the earth, and I decided to settle down in Hermance.

My goal is simple, but the path to it has been filled with doubts and obstacles owing to my ignorance in chemistry.
So, obstinately for seven years, empirically and little by little, I have been trying to understand the complex and invisible interactions between plants and minerals.
I borrow from nature what is available in my close environment only to lend it back as magical and contemporary abstractions. I use certain plants with dyeing properties that have been proved from time immemorial but forgotten ever since.
They are here, all around us, calling for me. Sometimes it's the rhizome, sometimes the young shoot rich in tannins, and very often the anthocyanins present in in flowers.
And thus, based on lunar cycles, their energies, the time of year, I conscientiously harvest, sparingly so as not to cause harm. All the while, listening quietly to nature that has so much to tell and religiously respecting its ultimate divine power and majestic beauty.

In the studio, I cook colour and conjure it to life through distillation, decoction, or maceration, following my notes, observations, and recipes from all my previous research, recorded in my Alchemical archives.
The exhilarating moment of the chemical reaction occurs when the macerate, distillate, or decoction comes into contact with the elements of the mineral world which do exist in my close environment, like calcium carbonate in eggshells, earth, clay containing aluminosilicates, acid, ash carrying calcium oxide and potash, tartaric acid in grapes, iron acetate, ammonia present in urine, magnesium in nettles, fungicides in wild oregano, and more...

The fusion occurs first-hand through gravitation, then precipitation.
The reactions are of astonishing curiosity and extraordinary beauty. I have realized that alchemy is the desire to make nature express something else, to penetrate its secrets which unfold only to the righteous and the obstinate.
I submit my precious precipitate to the goodwill of the sun then, the solution dries up, cracks, and the pigment is born.