I'm very pale so I wear a lot of black, it suits me.
I love colour on my walls and furniture though.
I remember listening to an artist years ago who said colour loves colour. He gave the example of an african or carribean woman swathed in several colours and how no one would blink an eye. Even if the colours clashed.
A white woman could never do the same. All the hues would wash us out. It's the same with decorating a home. If you use colour on the walls, your room will accept more shades and tones but the paler the walls the narrower your selection of colour. Does that make sense??? Hope so.
Agree with you Ceili,
I have exactly the same problem when I see a white woman wearing a lime green suit or an orange jumper - too much!
I personally love colour, my work tends to be colourful... but I feel like an imposter if I wear more than black and one other colour. But I do have a theory that if you are wearing more than three colours you have lost the plot.
Too many theories about colour. I especially question the "blue and green shall not be seen without a colour in between..."
I LOVE colour (especially, like Margo, when it's spelt correctly!)
I love it used in bright glowing swathes like the expressionists or Klimt or Rothkoand in subtle muted paintings like Gwen John's or Diebenkorn. The play of colours and their interaction is like music.
Having said that - here I sit in my black trousers and black T shirt - but pale blue pretty sandals and black and gold fuschia earrings - life size.
The room is all creams and beiges apart from vivid turquoise and deep blue curtains and cushions and paintings - and the colour from masses of books on the shelves
I agree about the bright colours with dark skins - with white skin it just doesn't work - it drowns me out.
As an elderly man, I wear subdued colors. But my underwear is psycho-delic. I'm not THAT old.
Psycho underwear, loose in a delicatessen..
Ok, I'll behave now.
On colors, I seem not be quite allied with everybody on always wearing what makes me look good. Or, better. Although I admit I should put the pea green sweater in the trash, it is sooooo soft. I should improve my presentation by always wearing it under an overshirt..
Very post-modern JL......colour is absent but present.
Wow! THAT'S a post-modern insight. You have "deconstructed" that part of my wardrobe.
oooch - sounds chilly with winter on its way
Interesting that people's dress seems to reflect
the landscape in which they live......think of
bright florals and Hawaaian shirts in coastal regions, rustic tweeds in the country, and in the city the dark greys, navies and other neutrals.....of course, I am generalizing.....
mmm - we don't go in for Hawaiian shirts in our coastal regions! this summer I think it was thick woolly jumpers and raincoats
Last week I spent a few days at the coast with 3 friends sketching and visiting galleries - black was the 'in' colour - maybe because it doesn't show the charcoal and paint splashes?
yes indeed, it is funny, you tend to wear darker colours when you are creating, but I tend to wear something that stops me from rubbing those ink covered printmaking hands all over the place...
I am in Lille (France) and colour doesn't reflect what it is like here... cold, "pearly" skies (that is the European's romantic view of cloud) But, I was told by some recently aquainted French friends, that you shouldn't look at the sky (being from Australia, it is automatic) but look to the people around you to find the sunshine and colour from within...
Perhaps they are right.
neat observations Ben, and I love your description
of the French clouds......I read somewhere that
one is more attuned to the nuances of colours
in one's own surroundings than elsewhere....By that
I mean a city person has a greater ability to
for distinguish amongst the most subtle gradations of grey, for example, than his or her country counterpart....
Along those lines, it took me two years before I could distinguish the more subtle change from summer to fall here in the SF Bay Area. It all has to do with the color of the light and length of shadows.
Same with me up here, chjsa. I live in a fog pocket, though it is fairly often Not Foggy. And the air is fairly clean up here, so there is sometimes an amazing luminosity, or as I prefer to say, luminous sky.
We just got the paintings for next month's show, and they are by a retired landscape arctiitect who was first a painter, rather like me in that. Her work is v e r y much about layers in light filled space, very resonant.... reverberations of light.
You can tell I am practicing my palaver. We promised the artist an ad, and it was quite a lame looking ad, as it is hard to put a photo image of something like this in the newspaper.
Oh well, the paintings themselves are gorgeous. I'm all sparked.
I'm going to start another having a gallery type topic, as we are in the last eight months of our five year lease and will not renew it, and won't start another one. So I need to put some thoughts down...
But back to color... color is (lovely) when it sings out of some context...
Osso, will you work only at the landscape architecture business, and paint for presentation in other peoples' galleries?
I believe Kayla got out of the business. Whatever happened to her? Her absence is a loss.
really? I always liked Kayla...
I have no idea, month to month, what I am about, re income. Seems I won some prize in a local show, re a piece I put in. Will let you know when I know.
Other people don't have galleries here, as such. I'd have to search out elsewhere, but much of my own work has sold, at least relative to a coherent show.
Well, there, work to do.....
Congratulations, Osso. Every bit helps, doesn't it?
I had a Spanish neighbour a few years ago. We started talking about the sky. It is extremely beautiful up here, especially at dawn and dusk. One thing led to another and we started talking about colour.
When he first moved to the prairies, he came during the summer. The gardens and trees were in full bloom, very lush and colourful. He couldn't understand why our tastes in house trims were so bland though. In Spain, he said, houses were painted in soft yet vivid pink, red and brown hues.
So he painted his home, here, in a terra cotta pink.
Then winter came. He said his home looked liked it was sick, a naked bird shivering amidst the ice and bare trees. The next summer he painted his home a pale yellow.
That's true here too, ceili, in california north north. I have taken a while to sink in with the colors...
maybe that is why most of the houses and buildings here in Lille and the area are made of (nice mind you) red brick...
