Frida Kahlos Recipe for Homemade Tinctures
As well as her wonderful artistic legacy, Frida left behind a simple recipe to make her paints and emulate her organic creativity from our own kitchen.
Also known as “the painter of agony”, Frida Kahlo left a very complete story of her life, her craft, her appreciations. In her journals, brave and folkloric as few others, there are several types of treasures of which we found this one.
The page reads as follows:
For the old concealer Fisita.
Distemper together 4 equal parts of egg yolks and raw linseed oil
Egg yolk = raw linseed oil = compound of dammar gum blended in turpentine = water
Dammar gum dissolved in turpentine and distilled water. With disinfectant take = concentrated aldehyde alcohol, ½ gram to a liter of water
Crush dammar inside of lemon [suspended in] turpentine for 8 to 10 days
Remove all the white from the yolk
1. Make an emulsion of the ingredients
2. Grind the colors into the emulsion
3. If a glossy texture is desired, increase the amount of dammar, up to two parts
4. If an overall matte finish is desired increase the water up to three parts
As ancient alchemists did before her, Frida also made her tinctures from natural elements. ‘Dammar’ is a resin derived from trees native to the Pacific that can be found in Markets in Mexico and probably in many other parts of the world. Her recipes were always presided by a memory or a personal anecdote, in this occasion “For the old concealer Fisita”, a nickname bestowed on her by her husband and painter, Diego Rivera.
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