The Vocabulary of Painting with Wallace Seymour

I find Wallace Seymour on an industrial estate nestled beneath a mountain in the Yorkshire Dales. The factory is an Aladdin's cave of colour, an alchemist's workshop. During my visit I am told stories of colour and rock; I learn when to harvest the wood for charcoal, and about networks of people around the world sourcing extraordinary pigments. Pip Seymour and Rebecca Wallace make artists' materials, 'from the ground up'. They care for these networks and pigments – they hold their stories, suspended in tubes of paint, drawing stones and anything else an artist might need to make a mark in colour. Rose Madder. Mermaid's Egg. Hangman's Ochre. Iron Plum …

Their ambition is simple, says Pip, 'We're trying to make available all the colours that artists have had access to in any time period. And why not?'

He continues: 'In our oil paint range, we've got three shades of lapis lazuli. The big companies got rid of all those colours years and years ago. They refer to them as obsolete. But how can they be obsolete? Titian was painting with lapis lazuli, and his paintings are fantastic, and everybody still looks at them.'

What they are encouraging is a revival, Rebecca elaborates: '…reviving a studio practice where the main objective is to make the best possible work you're going to make. And that means you have to make the best possible paint.'

However, this is very much a contemporary project. 'People make work in the time that they live in, rather than aping the past,' says Pip, 'so it could be relevant that all the colours are suddenly available. Suddenly everything's available, and that's a mirror of the world that we're living in.'

The kaleidoscope of colours they have created has the potential to 'bring back painting you haven't even seen yet', enthuses Rebecca. 'I think that's the excitement – what's going to happen next!'

Rebecca explains how the hand-painted swatches on their tubes of paint and in their colour charts are a 'filter' for their engagement with artists. The artist will say, 'I like that one, I love that one; do I need this to go with it?', or, 'What about that, what will it do?' 

'It's a visual conversation', comments Pip.

But it is more than colour and paint. 'We are involved in the preparation of painting, the preparation of drawing, preparation for everything,' says Rebecca:

'If you don't have that, your idea won't be successful. It's a bit like a story. The plot, it might change, but you need to have the backbone of the idea at the beginning – the surface has to be prepared to write the book.'

'We've had years of the image being imposed onto the surface, rather than the idea emerging from the surface through the painterly process. And part of that is to do with bad technique.' Pip suggests: 

'In a sense, what's happening in recent painting is that we've recovered a sophistication of application, a sophistication of technique, which helps the idea. Rather than the idea running into the buffers because you used the wrong paint, you actually begin to have a vocabulary, and you start to use it.'

This is something that Pip and Rebecca are passionate about – supporting the development of a painter's vocabulary and technique, and providing access to the fundamentals of painting, particularly amongst art students, 'to give people a basic platform to begin working’. 

'When we go into art schools, it's usually to do a half day or a day's workshop, which is to reintroduce the basics of oil paint,' explains Pip, 'And one of the frustrations with that is that this should really be project-based over a number of weeks. Like how it used to be in art schools.' 

Pip and Rebecca identify a shift in approach to the teaching of painting, and a loss of technical spaces and educators in art schools that allow for an ongoing conversation about painting methods. They feel that often, now, the onus is placed on the student to find out how to paint. And whilst Pip agrees that in principle, 'there's nothing wrong with that,' he continues, 'but you could help them along the way quite a lot.'

Pip and Rebecca are clear that the reason they are doing this work is not to be prescriptive about how paintings are made but to facilitate artists' ideas and open up spaces of critique and experimentation.

As Pip reflects: I quite like that somebody understands how the material works and then they twist it so that it works in a different way. In a way that relates to their own idea, or their vision. Usually, when you see a good painting, there's something about it that doesn't quite conform, and that's why you're drawn to it. It could be a simple thing, like one colour against another, or it could be something much more complex.

Ultimately, as makers of fine art materials, Pip and Rebecca – Wallace Seymour – are excited about the next generation of painters: 'There are all of these art schools producing students every year, and some of them at a really high level. And we need to see that.'

^{Header image: Visit to Wallace Seymour factory, 2026. Photo by Rosie Hermon.}

Rosie Hermon is a Curator at Freelands Foundation, where since 2021 she has supported the Studio Fellowships programme, artist residencies and research into the learning that takes place in artist studios.

Beyond her role with the Foundation, Rosie is a curator working across artist projects, residencies and research practices, with a focus on developing creative partnerships that span multiple localities. In 2025, she submitted her PhD thesis, which has the title, ‘Like a ghost’: Producing the Triangle international residency network online through curatorial practice.

The Freelands Painting Prize celebrates outstanding painting by final-year undergraduate artists attending art schools and universities across the UK. 

The winner is announced in autumn, at the opening of an exhibition of works by all of the shortlisted artists’ work at the Foundation’s home in London. They receive a prize from Freelands Painting Prize partners, Wallace Seymour, makers of high-quality painting and drawing materials, of a consultation and £1,000 worth of materials.