Spring #12 Green Violet Grid and Red Window Sill

oil on canvas

Number twelve is a square divided by six.  Two trees make a diagonal; the center two colors are lighter than the rest.  There are subtle textures between the sections.

Some people prefer directly observed landscapes/pictures compared to invented and vice versa, but both are informed by everything I see and have seen.

The Red Window Sill makes me thing of the game Mastermind which I recently played with my son now that summer vacation is in full swing.  The black, white, blue, green, red in the painting are like a row of the colored pieces but are specific hues rather than generic unmixed primaries.  Both paintings have this quality.

American painter Ellsworth Kelly is known for his color sensibility. At first I had a difficult time appreciating his shaped canvases painted with only one color.  Now I see the elegant beauty of his decisions.  He is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery which is a large enough space to show his large paintings, 80" x 77" for example.  In Painting for a White Wall Kelly tries to further control the viewing experience of his piece by strongly advising the background for his work by including it in the title.  A different colored wall would completely alter the color situation he has established.

  Contemporary curators experiment with wall colors.  Several years back the MFA Boston showed Sargent's The Daughters of Edward D. Boit on a maroon wall.  Red being the complement of green, the green-blacks in the painting came out.  How Sargent may feel about this is questionable, but it did achieve a fresh view of the picture long on view in the permanent collection.  Electric lights, print media, television and computers completely changed the way artists perceive color. In addition, images can be tweaked photo editing software with the slide of a bar.  It is very different than a painter deliberately choosing the light, color, and focus for a painting.  These issues for colorists are my own and my thoughts on them pervade everything I do including playing ancient board games.