Minerals as Art

I have spent the better part of two days photographing fossils and other minerals specimens to add to my Toad Hollow Minerals site. I'd like to do a mineral collage with some of the concretions, they are so beautiful. Pictured above is a pair from Utah, cut and polished. The fossil teeth, would make powerful focals in amuletic necklaces. The coprolite takes the prize for ugly, but makes a thoughtful gift for boys of a certain age!

I'd like to share the work of a couple of painters who have make minerals the subject of their art. Michigan artist Susan M. Robinson's acrylic of this candle-lit cave features a nice azurite/malachite specimen. Her vanadenite looks like strange flora from another planet. I also like the work of Leroy de Barde. Entirely self-taught, he was recognized as a virtuoso while still in his 20's. His Minerals in Crystalization, watercolor and gouache (1813), exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1817 and is in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Paris.