Thursday, December 4, 2008

Colors on the Brain


As artists, color is SUPER  important! I once had a discussion with a musician comparing the 7 notes and 7 colors- each vibrating at a different frequency. I believe we actually resonate with certain colors. As I go through my life, I have color constant favorites and others pop up as time goes on. I suspect we are attracted to the color we need at the moment we need it.  There are even color tests and books about the subject. For instance, we can be green with envy, environmentally green, green as in a newbie, it can be hard to be green (Kermit), we all want green backs, etc. Color can also affect us adversely. Red walls in restaurants are designed to help us chow our food faster. Check Spelling
The colors you use when you make art could be seen as a journalistic color map of your life. Go back and review your work and let me know what you think!

Detail from 1995 era 'Perception is Reality'

4 comments:

Rayna said...

I don't even have to look at my work to tell you it started out bright and in 1997 went to muted, greyed-down and off-colors and has never returned to bright unless I make a concerted effort for a specific reason to do a piece with brights.

But I also believe that we need specific colors in our lives at certain times, and our unconscious will make sure we surround ourselves with them.

wlstarn said...

Hi,
Thank you so much for the comment on my blog photos. From someone who produces your work, it's a high compliment, and it came at the end of a truly awful week.

I absolutely love bright colors myself, especially on black. Love the piece in this post.

Anonymous said...

I weave, I knit, I paint and some days with subdued, most days with vibrant. I find I have a color in my mind's eye even more than pattern and may start over several times till it seems to match.

Alison Schwabe said...

Earthy colours (Ancient Expressions gallelry on my website) were features of my first works, then very strong brights (Colour Memories gallery) with occasional exceptions in that period,like 'Grey Landscape'. Then I think it has been more 'dark with inserts of brights'(Ebb & Flows are mostly so) and the Tracks series is back again to mostly dark earthy neutrals. A gallery director said recently viewing some new work 'so what happened to all your colour?' Well, Yamandu, you have to do what you have to do - I'm sure Rayna's right, with the shifts in life there are shifts in how we express ourselves through colour. I have never gone for pastels, at all - there's something a bit un-Australian about them and it all has to do with our light v N American light, seriously - through the haze everything is relatively dulled down - key word relatively - but if you've never experienced southern hemisphere clarity and light, well, you can't imagine anything else. I always find the difference very noticeable each time I go to the US, and we lived there for some years. Quite spontaneously people often remarked on my different 'individual' sense of colour.

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