Colour changes everything. It takes paintings to giddy heights or sends them to the depths. With little in between.
A woodsman, after spending a few days with Tom Thomson, said that he would never see colour the same way again. And what portrait artist has ever regretted taking a risk with some underlying greens, blues and purples in skin tones?
Up close, colour invariably predominates and this also holds true at a distance. Pretend you’re looking at a Monet, up close – very close: you can see his brush-strokes (and brush-hairs too), lumps of paint, certainly, and perhaps also some forms and values (tho’ a little less evident), but it’s undeniably colour which asserts – you can’t miss it: a brilliant combination of subtlety, juxtaposition and vibrancy. Now, imagine walking to the back of that gallery, then right through the walls and beyond. It’s still his colour that you see: and as the image fades into a spec in the distance, it’s the last thing that you see. Monet’s colour.
Something clicked when I really started using colour: my paintings became those colours, whether bold, primary and solid, or just a hint to convey a feeling or alter an emphasis. Colour changes everything.
P.S.: I’m getting out my colour palette for a one-day workshop: Saturday, 4 May: The Mixing Palette and the Magic of Colour.