British artist and color developer Stuart Semple creates paints and pigments by integrating cutting-edge science with craft and creative practice, through collaboration with specialist laboratories and hands-on experimentation. His pigments and paints are now part of the Straus Center’s Forbes Pigment Collection. In his talk, Semple will consider how the traditional role of the colorman has shifted in the 21st century from small workshop trade to global industry. Semple will show how color can reflect power, control, and resistance and what it means to reclaim it. In an age of mass production and digital connectivity—when the internet functions as a new Silk Road for materials and ideas—Semple will explore why direct relationships between artists, makers, and materials still matter and how reimagining those connections can shape the future of color.