A Few Thoughts About Colour

I know it’s a brand new year and all ~ but there’s something I couldn’t help noticing about my work in the past year (and actually, in the past few), and it’s got something to do with colour.

This reminds me of something that happened waaay back when ~ I was giving something in to a book, a ‘group’ book ~ you know, the kind where everybody gives an illustration and they compile it. The thing I was supposed to be illustrating was a folk song about a butterfly.

My work was rejected because they said my work had always depended on colour (for it to be worth anything) and since all the illustrations were in black and white… (Anyway, lucky me x I guess they took pity on me and put my work in the table of contents. Not to be ungrateful or anything, but, yip (haha).

You know, that kinda stung, lol.

But anyway I’ll admit a lot of my work is colourful. The Secret Lives of Color quotes Goethe as saying ‘Savage nations, uneducated people, and children have a great predilection for vivid colours.’ (‘Well, there it is.’ ^^)

I also remember a couple of other things. One was when this famous artist I used to know and I were looking at some work at the Met (back here, not the one in New York), and she told me that this other, older famous artist said something like, iono. If the artist (or the art) is really good it shouldn’t have a whole lot of colour in it.

That was a very long time ago, but I remember thinking to myself something along the lines of, yah well whatever or, well then, I guess I suck.

The other thing was back at art school, it was the plate where we had to draw a thing transforming into another thing. (I remember I had a fishbone turn into a clock, and a dipper turn into a horse (of course).) You know me, I did it in rainbow colours because I’m just like that (I didn’t grow up having the mom that I have and watching Rainbow Brite and Care Bears for nothing).

One of my art prodigy classmates took one look at it and asked me why I didn’t take the plate seriously. Uh ~ I did, though. (Sometimes, I think I take my work way too seriously.) What ~ just because the colours were loud and happy, means I wasn’t serious?
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Well, all those folks can shut up, now.

Not that I’m making what I make for them or anything. I’m just saying (finally lol) that lately, I don’t know. My colours seem to be less… just, less, haha. They're restrained, now, I guess.

And it’s not entirely because I’m running out of stuff, either.

(See around last year or so it occurred to me how much stuff I’ve got that I don’t use, so I’ve resolved to stop buying stuff (shyeah, right) and to make stuff with the stuff I already have. Yeah, I remember (and agree x totally see the point) (honestly) that famous artist I knew saying that what you make shouldn’t depend on what you’ve got, but ~

(~I mean, like I remember this Egyptian artist who did papyrus sculptures (not paintings)? Because… and this guy back here who paints on the mats we’ve got because… well they’re handy, aren’t they lol ~ and I’m not knocking that.)

Besides, I still buy colours (as in just the one) when I run out, because.

But yeah. I seem to have… I don't know. I’m just not feeling colour like I used to. And I think it shows.
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Is it because I’m older now?

Because that thing Goethe said might explain it. Is it because I’m lazy ~ because, instead of having to juggle 10 or more colours I’ll only have to deal with six (still a lot) or, four.

You know, in a way, that’s kind of more work actually because then I’ll start mixing those four to get the colours in between. Also, I’ll use ‘analogues’ for the colours I removed from my palette.

Take the marmots above, for example. My palette was basically (please excuse my ‘colour maths’) (and the bad photo):

In case you can’t see it, I limited myself to just vermillion, sienna, umber, and ochre. Ochre was my analogue (or replacement) for yellow, umber for blue, and vermi for red. I did go in with chartreuse, pthalo blue and alizarin but super limited (for the berries, you know).

Anyway so then I started doing

• Ochre + vermi
• Ochre + sienna
• Ochre + umber

Like that. Again, I remember that famous artist I mentioned (not the older one) was heavily into earth colours. And right now, I’m remembering (I may have mentioned this before) the song from the Barnum musical where Barnum’s wife was saying how earth colours were nice, too (and how it didn’t have to be all loud circus colours).

That wasn’t me at the time I remembered ~

But I do remember when I first appreciated ochre ~ it was when I was working on Sinta ~

~ I realised how bright, warm, and happy ochre could be, too. And also, another memory (am I about to die? Because I’m remembering all these things and it’s that whole ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing?) ~ when I was 12 or so I was taking art lessons at a gallery and my teacher (who was from that famous art school back here) ~

She said to mix a colour with its opposite colour (on the colour wheel) to make it darker. I was 12 so that blew my mind, like you think well, chuck some black in there to make it darker (or white if you wanted it lighter). It was only much, much later when I got older that I appreciated what she meant.

And now I’m thinking maybe all those browns aren’t so “matronic” after all. (Maybe because I’ve reached that age.) (I mean, yes they are LOOOL but, I think I might be keeping a more open mind, now haha)
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Is it because I’m less happy?

Not that anyone cares but, I’d like to take this opportunity to explain that the loud colours (and toothy grins) weren’t because I was happy, necessarily. I seem to remember explaining this once before ~ that those things were aspirational. I’m actually just as miserable (and toxic, cowardly, etc etc, yes yes) as I ever was in those days (ROFLMAO).

​​Is it because I’ve given up on ever being happy, then? I don’t know. But I do know that my palettes are often influenced by my mood. As well as the thing I’m trying to get across. I don’t think I have to go into, you know, colours sending certain messages or meanings or whatever ~ there’s more than enough literature by faaar smarter people than I am for that.

In any case, I don’t think I’m distressed, necessarily by the turn my colour choices have taken, of late. I’m just, remarking on it, or noting it, is all. And wondering, idly, whether my colours will ever go back to the loud vitriolic punches-in-the-eye they might have been, once.

They say it’s natural x normal for people to change and we have to if we’re to grow and survive. And artists are people (I hope) (not beasts) (Fauves not withstanding). I remember wanting to go back to the ‘purity’ of how I used to do blobs, but with these marmots I feel like I don’t want to make any more, or any more potatoes, either. At least, not for a good long while.

(And even if it’s Year of the Horse this year, I don’t think I want to make any more notebook steeds, either.)
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At least, not the way I usually have.

If anything, I hope this, shift ~ in my colour choices, technique, or whatever ~ is a sign of real change ~ hopefully of growth for me as an artist.

Come to think of it, when I was doing knifework on the last piece I did last year, I was ‘cheating’ (i.e. I wasn’t laying the scales on in order). It turned out messier (which bothered the control x neat freak in me ~ but, I liked how it turned out, better).

I mean, isn’t that what this is all about? Becoming better (whatever that means for you)? I remember (again so sorry) wondering what it meant to ‘grow as an artist’ ~ I can’t say I’ve figured that out at this point but I’m hoping I’m at least (finally) starting to get there (I ought to be after 20 years ^^)

I’d like to end by saying that while it is (and always has been) very dear to me, colour isn’t the be-all, end-all of my work. I do have a lot of work (even from my *happy colour days*) where I used limited or monochrome or achromatic palettes (just sayin’ ^^). And that maybe, that’s just where I’m at or where I’m headed these days, is all.​

I honestly don’t know where or how my work is going to end up but wherever it is, I hope that if nothing else it’s someplace I (if no one else) can say is better. 
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