Tag: Art

Colors & Pigments: What is your base pallet?

What is your favorite color, someone asked–having in mind fabrics we were about to wrap ourselves in for a dress up show off and dance on the roof of the Ox…

An impossible question, I said. Every color is what it is only by the colors around it. Ask me, what combinations I’d like.

They didn’t believe me. Thought I was… I don’t know. But it’s true. We don’t know color as pure gradations on the spectrum of light, but in consort, in harmony with their surroundings. Place a tile of a particular chroma, change the surrounding colors, and–it’s as though transformed. Another color.

Add to that, that we don’t deal with color as primary light, but through the medium of pigments. I remember someone–probly on Facebook–showing his whatever… claimed that no one needs more than 5 tubes of pigment: blue yellow red black and white.

Sure. All other colors are variants of the primary colors. But pigments don’t give us color as pure light, but colors as rejections of parts of the spectrum. What appears as blue, is because the pigment absorbs reds and yellows and reflects, that is, casts off what we see–which is blue. And mixing pigments involves so many more variables.

Cut to the chase. When I want blue… there is no such thing as pure blue–but only the variants from chemical compounds–and they will all have different properties when we mix them with other pigments. Blue and yellow make green, so we know… but Ultramarine (PB-29… the standard way pigments are classified.. so you know what you’re really getting), makes a very different green than PB-28. Add to that, different pigments vary in opacity/transparency, in tinting strength.)

So what each artist chooses for their pallet will vary. Here is mine. What is yours?

Blue
PB – 15 Phthalo (or 15-2)
PB-28 Cobalt
PB-29 Ultramarine
PB-35 Cerulean
Yellow
PY-35 Cadmium
PY-38 Quinacridone
RED
PR-83 Alizarin Crimson
PR-101 Burnt Siena
PR-108 Cadmium Red
Orange
PO-20 Cadmium
Violet
PV-15 Ultra Marine
PV-19 Quinacridone
Green
PG-7 Thalo/Hookers Green
G-17 Chromium Oxide
Earth
PBr-6 Iron Oxide
PBr-7 Burnt Umber

…and I’m only dealing with acrylics. With oils, you have to factor in the varying expansion/contraction rates on drying unless what you put on is all one layer. Else your paint might crack and flake and fall off your canvas.

View GALLERY HERE.

#401 finished

#401 finished

Here it is. What do you think? Hope I didn’t do too much. 35×22″ Acrylic on canvas

 

#401 WIP 003

Laying the ground. Critical decisions to make. Leave ‘unfinished’, with minimal reworking, or continue to something closer to my original impulse? I don’t follow through on initial ideas, in painting any more than in my writing. The first brush stroke, the first word, and a dialog begins. I never know where the conversation will lead.
View GALLERY HERE.

Drawing the thread, stitching the world together, a line at a time.

images

Drawing calms me. It’s very physical; I don’t need the muscular strength of throwing pottery on a wheel (something I did full time for almost 10 years)–but requires every bit the control and coordination. There’s always an element of drawing in my painting–even in the most abstract pieces, and when I get away from that, something is lost in the finished work.
Even the trash assemblages are a form of drawing, not with marks on a flat surface–but in three dimensions, creating lines, geometric or chaotic forms, tonal variations.
My need for this–to return to drawing, day after day without breaks, has progressed–gradually at first, when I returned to making art in July of 2012, to the point now that if I go two or three days without drawing my level of physical anxiety increases and my thoughts spiral toward patterns of depression.
At the end of a day of shopping, cooking, preparing a canvas, taking care of this business or that–I may be exhausted, but I have to take the time–even if only a half an hour sketching figures from an anatomy book.
I didn’t realize until recently–how important this was for my emotional and physical health. It’s that integration of interior and exterior perception… stitching together the fabric of reality.
The metaphor calls to mind, my mother, who was deeply skilled at both drawing–and a seamstress/tailor. I stitch together those ancient bonds, as well, memories and the present. As with poetry. Word by word. Line by line.

#400

#400

#400 25×33″ Acrylic, canvas strips, paper on Masonite. Photo misses the 3 dimensional–curving delineation is from pieces that were left stuck on the surface when I ripped off stuffed rolls of paper and fabric from an earlier piece (#134 “Late Capitalism”)–like fat bloody infected intestines. The ‘face’ is from those fragments.The “Chagalesque” character was not intentional, and definitely not something I’ll pursue in the future. But what the fuck, I like the colors.

View GALLERY HERE.

W.I.P. 3 stages… stage 1

WIP and pics 001

32×23 Acrylic on canvas. Go through the same stages. The first, as here–shows promise. Almost enough to let it stand, as is…but not quite. The next stage, I ruin it. Put it away. Sleep on it. In a dream, or while taking a walk, I get a sense of what I need to do. The third stage–I rescue it… bring it to completion… or really do ruin it. Prepare the canvas to paint over it and start a new painting.

What will become of this one?

View GALLERY HERE.

What’s the alternative?

Sometimes I play with the idea–and it twists my mind–of being a “success” … in what that comes to in popular notions.

My worst nightmare!

To make stuff to entertain the rich and powerful, and worse–for them to use as investments.

THAT”S what “success” means for an artist.

What’s the alternative? I want people to see my work. I want to be appreciated for what I do. But the only way open to pursue that, is to make money, and of course, to do all the shit you have to do make that happen.. .which ends up… making stuff that entertains the rich and powerful–the ones who are fucking up this world and leading hell bent to species suicide, and worse… making art they can use to make even more money!

Better, give my work away. Or burn it.

Or make work they would love… but would leak poisons to melt their brains.

Oh… that I had that power.