“I prefer living in color ”
After the warm months of Spring and Summer and the many miles of traveling to and from art fairs, I’m gearing up for Fall and Winter. For me, this is the time to hole up in my in-home studio and create new work, to plan a few upcoming indoor shows, to investigate “calls for artists,” and to gather my thoughts as I ready for 2024.
In the eight “booth shows” I participated in between mid-April and mid-September 2023—only one of them in my own town—the most often-heard comment from the lovely people I met was, “I love your colors!” I listen for this comment, and I am never disappointed.
I’ve been contemplating color and how it moves and motivates us, and especially how it figures into my own work. When I was around 16, I wrote on my bedroom wall, in pen, “Who cares if the sky is green and the grass is blue??? Where it came from, I do not know. Somewhere deep within, for sure. In my recent contemplation of color and color theory, I gathered some favorite quotes:
Marc Chagall, who lived to almost 100, said,
“All colors are friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.”
I challenge you to spend time thinking about that statement (hint: you may want to study a color wheel!). And of Chagall, Picasso said,
“When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.”
Perhaps when I defaced my bedroom wall, I had run into Paul Gauguin, who said,
“If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.”
One of my favorite artists is Georgia O’Keeffe. Of any visual artist, I’ve read the most about her, and I was fortunate to tour her home in Abiquiu, New Mexico, as well as visit Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. She said, most profoundly,
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way—things I had no words for.”
I’m guessing many of my artist friends and acquaintances can relate to Georgia’s comment. And, finally, I wholeheartedly agree with David Hockney, who said,
“I prefer living in color.”
Have a colorful day!