Oil on canvas, 73.5×63.5cms.
I think this painting has a lot of vibrating colour – sometimes it almost gives me a headache and other times I’m completely attracted to it’s energy. In choosing the palette, I was thinking about utilising complimentary colours, and my palette had to be cleaned off several times during the painting process to prevent the colours getting too muddy. My palette consisted of Titanium White, Zinc White, Williamsburg Indian Yellow, Michael Harding Yellow Lake Deep, Daler Rowney Crimson Alizarin, Gamblin Radiant Green, Gamblin Radiant Turquoise, Isaro Prussian Blue and Sennelier Indigo.
I thought it would be interesting to use the palette of this painting as the inspiration to do the first few Albers: Interaction of Colour exercises. I didn’t get the exact shades unfortunately, but quite close. The optical illusions of the three layouts show how a colour is affected by its surrounding. In each, the center colour (red/mint/red) is the same in the top and bottom half, but the colour that abuts affects hue.
Sidebar: I wonder if anyone has tried to match hex colour codes to specific paints? I know that artist paint pigments have a specific coding system that doesn’t relate to the hex system. The Pantone system is used for house paints, fabrics, and other commercial applications, and can be translated into hex codes fairly well, but I have had occasions where I would like to use my specific oil paint colours, for example, my business cards and now I’d like to play with my specific colours in the Interaction of Colours app. I have in the past used the tools available at DIY shops that allow you to point scan a sample and match specific wall paint colours, but I haven’t seen the same facility available here in Lisbon.
I’m thinking about how to apply this kind of colour illusion to my paintings. I particularly like the lavender and mint effect where the edges seem to blend and shift (or do I need a new glasses prescription?). It has crossed my mind to make an abstract painting consisting only of shades of middle greys. I imagine it would have an effect, where your eyes aren’t able to focus on the edges up close, and the colours almost merge together from far away. What then happens to the painting itself? Does it end up melting into sea of greys? And then what happens when it is placed next to the vibrating colours of Almost Home: Vistas de Baixo? Perhaps these thoughts will find their way into my next paintings…