The Language of Colour
Colour and the pleasure that it gives us has been at the heart of my work since first starting to paint. Twenty years ago I came across this in the writing of Roland Barthes:
“Colour is a kind of bliss . . . like a closing eyelid . . . a tiny fainting spell.”
It evokes for me the intense pleasure in encountering a painting by say, Helen Frankenthaler, or perhaps Stanley Witney’s blocks of colour in varying hues and saturation. Ah - there’s the language - hue, saturation, value, chroma - not to mention the ‘language’ of relationships - monochromatic, complementary, triadic and more…..
It’s this language that I felt I could only speak falteringly, and that if I tried to describe a painting I just didn’t have the words.
So - I’ve spent the last six weeks learning just that - The Language of Colour - and, thank goodness, it involved paint. A pre-recorded online course by Mark Eanes - artist and lecturer based in California - with lectures, demonstrations and live calls. It’s a pretty intense time of colour mixing, learning what prismatic colours are, muting them and how to make chromatic greys. Charts of secondary colours - mixing from orange through to blue and muting them with degrees of white. Then there’s the question of value - light to dark. The beauty of the course is that you learn through the process. Mixing using a limited palette of one blue, red, yellow, and a white. The myriad of colours that shift when you change from using hot Cadmium Red to dark but transparent Alizarin Crimson, or the cool strength of Phthalo blue to the warmth of Ultramarine. Combine Alizarin Crimson with Ultramarine and a violet appears that has spiritual depth.
Working in a structured way allows greater freedom; the restraints of a limited palette allow you to fully explore the depths of colour mixing. New paintings coming up with a new understanding of colour. I’m also spending time looking at some of my favourite work by other artists with new eyes and a new language. Planning to write about them here in the weeks to follow.
