While vacationing at the beach in 1991, Madrid-based artist Jimmy Pons stepped on a piece of tar. These "tar biscuits," or chapapote in Spanish, are the byproducts of cleaning out oil tankers--the tar is simply dumped in the ocean and left to wash up on beaches. While trying to wash the sticky mess off his foot, Pons noticed that a variety of colors, "from black to cream," emerged from the tar. And so Petrolart was born. Now every summer, Pons becomes what he calls a "nonstop volunteer," picking tar lumps off the beach and converting them into painting material. His art, which shows elements of Primitivism attempts to reconcile the benefits and drawbacks of fossil fuels, and reflects his desire to make something detrimental and polluting into something beautiful,