The Seduction of Color

 

Love is in the Air

The Seduction of Color

Colour has taken hold of me…Colour and I are one. I am a painter. Paul Klee

Reading those words was like coming home. Color is a seduction.

Even before I devoted myself to my studio practice, I used my body as a canvas, dressing in an ever-changing wardrobe of harmonious and discordant colors…a walking color wheel, mixing odd patterns and designs. I took pleasure in the visual tensions these imperfect mash ups created.

It’s no wonder, when I turned my full attention to painting, the sensuous variations of colors that can be created by mixing them together addicted me to my practice. Some colors are so sublime, I am almost tempted to eat them. I become transfixed. It’s a meditative gateway to infinity.

My dear friend, James Edward Scherbarth (Jim) said, “whatever you are passionate about, that is your purpose”.

Through my practice, I have discovered color is my passion and my vocabulary. Even though I am not a synesthete (someone fortune enough to experience one sensory pathway intersecting another IE a musician who hears a note and simultaneously sees a color) I do “feel” the energy of colors.

When I walk outside, I am stimulated and inspired by the dramatic and subtle color palettes Nature offers us every day. It’s an emotional deep breath. From the brilliance and riot of spring spectrums to the monochromes of winter’s icy clear reflection pool for the skies, Nature gives us velvet reds next to silky greens, making our senses pop with delight, then she offers us an infinite number of greys as she sheds herself for the long night’s sleep of winter.

Sight is the last of the five senses to develop…it’s the witness sense. Seeing allows us to be present and observe this marvelous world we are born into.

Being able to make art is a gift. I know without it I would be lost. Color is the way I communicate my gratitude on canvas.