There
is a previous Spotlight called “I
needed colour”. Such a wish for colour could be a widespread
feeling, in mild midwinter, among grey skies in which all hues
are jumbled and somewhat lethargic. Pillow clouds for sleepy
colours, hibernating before they burst forth again.
So
if we want more colour now, how do we get it? How do we make more
colour around us and our loved ones and a world which may be in need?
Through art? And how do we choose which colours to add to the
palette, the canvas, the eye and the spirit?
This
Spotlight is about colour palettes – not just a single colour being
all-important, but the way we use them, and want them, and how these
processes and times might relate to the spread and breadth of
brushstrokes, and which tubes we pick up and squeeze out and mix
together in in the studio light of bulbs, or candles, or the daylight
of sun.
Happy
New Year everyone. And if you get this post by way of email, then you are on the LAS mailing list, as John mentioned in the Christmas and end-of-year message to us.
If
you have colour thoughts, why not share them in the comments, as well
as in your art.
'Winter Scene' - Remegio Onia
How
do we make colour choices? Is it about visual aesthetics?
Complementarity, as described in colour wheel theory? Emotional
associations?
We tend to think of yellow as friendship, red as passion, black as death, white as peaceful innocence, green as nature, and blue as calm. These are classic western views of colour, at a generic level. We also sometimes say that blues and greens are “cold”, and yellows and reds are “warm”, which matches the temperatures of sun and sea and clouds and fire. However most artists say that there are cold reds, and warm blues, and the whole thing is very contextual.
So how do we arrive at the colours we use and twist into art? And what do colours evoke in us when we experience them?
At
the beginning of the year we could consider that the 12 colours in
the colour wheel might reflect months of the year. If so, what
colour are we in now? Green? Blue? Magenta? Yellow-orange?
There are also the four “humours” based on ancient notions of bile, which could be our four seasons:
Instinctively
the yellow may be Spring, blood red Summer, phlegmatic Autumn,
leaving black for Winter, the bile humour of melancholia. This may
not be the most life-affirming or energising of seasonal associations
unless we choose which colour we are in – or wish to be in – and
what it means.
Is
it an act of superstition or magic to use colours in this way, or is
there something genuine behind attaching colours to emotions?
“As
far as colours are concerned, opposites refine eachother. They
balance eachother, they soothe eachother, they play off eachother’s
intensities. We aren’t really like that in our relationships with
other humans. We don’t find people that are opposite us and create
that balance, create that harmony.” - Kolby Harrell
Recently
I have had visions with a bright yellow colour, slightly like
turmeric: slightly orange and ochre. ...Images of this yellow
hovering over a sparkling sea, and in towns, glinting on walls and
through lamplight, and glowing in the roads and windows and
people.
What could it mean?
What could it mean?
In
flowers, red often refers to passionate love. Yellow flowers are for
friendship.
I am taking the colour visions to mean, for 2019, a
call to friendship - with a touch of red and earth.
Yellow with a hint of red and ochre, to recognise that friendship is love too. In changing times we may need more than one kind of love. We need friendship and compassion, and acceptance. And we are still united as one, through the earth and ether.
Yellow with a hint of red and ochre, to recognise that friendship is love too. In changing times we may need more than one kind of love. We need friendship and compassion, and acceptance. And we are still united as one, through the earth and ether.
Colours
embrace us. Colour wheels, flower colours, humours and meanings….
My colour of this moment is Yellow-orange.
I am
not using it in any art works, but it informs how I use colours when
pouring resins, and when black-sketching
the
hard lines and soft volumes of
a contoured head,
and rending thick silver
wires
into a
reflective frame of a buffalo skull. The
colours I am using now are almost the oppoite: blues, whites, black,
greys
and silver – monochromatics
which, now that
I
think of it, fit winter's clouds,
that steely
sky,
chill expanses of air or water with hints of crystals, and the glint
in an eye anticipating the rise of smiles.
The colour in my mind is more about the prospect of Friendship
and warmth. Chrome yellow.
If
you have colour thoughts, why not share them in the comments, as well
as in your art.
Happy
New Year everyone.
References
Top
image: ‘Cosmic Artist’ by Alex Grey
https://www.jasmuheen.com/tag/alex-grey-art/
Kolby
Harrell’s TED talk including colours in relationships, and as
socially evolutionary commitment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzCuvam0-5o
LAS
Spotlight “I needed colour” about Jim Carey’s artisms:
http://ludlowartsociety.blogspot.com/2018/05/spotlight-i-needed-colour.html
Chrome
yellow, the pigment, or ‘Crome Yellow’, the first novel of Aldous
Huxley
Humours,
the four colours (and Olympic swimming psychology training):
https://swimcoach.blog/tag/olympic-swimmer/
Colours
in culture: https://getuplift.co/color-psychology-guide/
