Artist Paints With Toxic Sludge In An Effort To Raise Awareness Of Coal Mining Pollution

Using toxic runoff found in the Ohio River region, Sabraw produces his own DIY pigments -- bold yellows and reds that are sourced from the oxidized sludge of abandoned coal mines. A masterful feat of art-meets-science on their own, the paint colors eventually became the basis for a primordially beautiful painting series, bringing light to the ecological dilemma of the river region.

Sabraw began his pigment work several years ago when he was working with a sustainability immersion group called "Kanawha." Sabraw and the group were touring southern Ohio -- a region with the largest concentration of coal burning power plants in the world -- when the artist began to take an interest in the very visible effects of pollution in his state.

"I was struck by the local streams that are largely orange, red and brown as if a mud slide was happening further upstream," Sabraw explained in an email to The Huffington Post. "When I found out that these colors were mainly from iron oxide, the same raw materials used to make many paint colors, I wanted to use this toxic flow to make paintings rather than with imported iron oxide from China."

It turned out that an environmental engineer and fellow Ohio University professor by the name of Guy Riefler had already been working on a viable paint sourced from toxic sludge, so the two began collaborating. Together they roamed the Ohio landscape, exploring the areas surrounding abandoned or disused coal mines. There rainwater was mixing with the toxic levels of heavy metals found in the mines' caverns, eventually flowing out into streams and rivers, producing yellow, orange and red hues as the metals in the water hit the oxygen outside.