The thrill of color in paintings

From the start of my time painting, I’ve been a colorist, fascinated by the visual and emotional impact of color.  Form certainly matters as well – as Mark Rothko showed so powerfully.  In my decades of studying paintings, I’ve always wondered – still wonder – why Rothko’s color-field paintings enthrall me.  I’m not alone, though I’ve read quite-good explanations.

Mark Rothko's Yellow Over Purple (1956).

 While Rothko’s paintings seem to demand that the viewer look internally for meaning (and defy that meaning to be “programmatic,” since they convey emotion and introspection rather than a “story,” Clyfford Still conveyed drama in his paintings’ value contrasts and jagged forms.  I see action, even fighting, and if I want I can see narrative.

Clyfford Still’s 1949, No. 1.

I started out painting Color Abstractions, each focused on two complementary colors: 

red and green,

orange-red and blue-green,

gold and purple,

yellow and blue (with a little orange).

Not too much orange, though:  orange is quite powerful, quite jarring.

In closing, I have to acknowledge the master of color and color theory, Josef Albers.

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color (1963), Plate IV-1.

Next: what happened when I’ve added texture to color?

The role of death in life, 8

“We humans are, however, not psychologically equipped to fully acquire such equanimity without an enduring sense of significance that extends beyond our own individual existence.  In The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life, Robert Jay Lifton described five core modes of death transcendence:

“Biosocial:  by passing on one’s genes, history, values, and possessions, or by identification with an ancestral line or ethnic or national identity that perseveres indefinitely.”

“Theological: faith in a soul and the possibility of literal immortality;  or a more symbolic sense of spiritual connection to an ongoing life force.”

“Creative:  contributing to future generations through innovations and teaching in art, science, and technology.”

“Natural: identifying with all life, nature, or even the universe.”  [One recognizes that one is a tiny part of something that will endure.]

“Finally, experiential transcendence is characterized by a sense of timelessness accompanies by a heightened sense of awe and wonder…. such experiential states are most fulfilling when they occur in the context of one of the other four modes: playing with your children, engaging in spiritual rituals, throwing yourself into creative activity, being immersed in the natural world.”

-- Sheldon Solomon et al. (2015).  The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life, pp. 221-2

The role of death in life, 7

For the Greek Epicurus and the Roman Lucretius, living with our knowledge of mortality requires that “we become aware of our fear of death, then recognize that it is irrational to be afraid of death.  Dead people are devoid of all sensations, just as we all were before we were conceived.  No one is terrified of the time before they were born, so why fret about death, since it is precisely the same insensate state that prevailed for eons before our time?”

-- Sheldon Solomon et al. (2015).  The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life, p. 216

The role of death in life, 6

“Many suicides, rather ironically, result from the horror of mortality itself.  Why bother to go on living when death will get you anyway?  ‘The majority of suicides,’ wrote the great Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, ‘would not take their lives if they had the assurance that they would never die on this earth.  The self-slayer kills himself because he will not wait for death.’  Dostoyevsky came to a similar conclusion in The Possessed, in which the character Pyotr Stepanovich explained his impending suicide: ‘I wish to deprive myself of life…because I don’t want to have the fear of death.’”

-- Sheldon Solomon et al. (2015).  The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life, pp. 201-2