Colour Me Icelandic
Hvolsvöllur, Iceland
20 August, 2017
Colour, colour, exuberant colour – a mighty and meaty topic,
however a really fun one. This post will be one of many related, but that’s only
because you can’t ever really tire it out in a conversation – only unless you’re
talking about it wrong. As some of you know, I’ve spent my last week
adventuring around Iceland with my dear mum. Now I’m back home, hunger and
sleep jet-lagged, and scrambling to re-pack and tie off loose ends before my four-month endeavor in Europe. So here I am, productively perched on a
chair, eating shrimp pasta and red sauce at 8:00 in the morning, ready to throw
some stuff atchya!
Reykjavík, Iceland
16 August, 2017
Let’s assume
everyone is familiar with the cute colour wheel that your 4th grade
teacher has hanging up in their classroom. Everyone knows their primary,
secondary, and tertiary colours, and everyone has heard the word complementary
in a studio setting. Colour is truly amazing because it’s a topic that can be
explained both simply and in staggering complexity. When you’re young, you
learn all of the colors, how they mix, and that it is made from the absorption of
light into an object. But colour, like a lot of concepts, can be broken down
and spread across a vast number of subjects in a far more adept setting. You
can take an entire college course of the science of light and the UV spectrum. On the slightly more right-brain side of
things, there is also a class offered within my school’s art department called
Colour Theory. What a lot of us forget is that colour affects us in everyday life
and it’s a deep and mysterious language that most of us don’t know how to
fluently communicate with.
Reykjavík, Iceland
16 August, 2017
Try and think about ways we use colour in purposeful places.
We paint the rooms in our houses certain colours to ie. Help us sleep at night,
make us feel warm and comfortable while watching the telly, or receive a sense
of refreshment when we step out of the shower (unless you’re going to the DIY
shop thinking “I wonder what colour room I would like to defecate in?”) I
apologise if I’m crude, but we do think about these things. Some of us would
prefer not to sit on a toilet in a confined room with stark black walls because
we might feel too intimidated by the intensity while perched down with our
trousers around our ankles. Our house is the one place where we have complete
control over the environment and how it emotionally affects us. We place throw
pillows on sofas, paint walls, control the amount and location of light
sources, and lay down rugs to artificially fabricate a world that we would like
to come home to. This is one way we, like interior designers, use colour to our
advantage.
Reykjavík, Iceland
16 August, 2017
Another way, a very similar one, is when fine artists use it
to create a false sense of emotion within their viewers. One of the most difficult
skills I’ve come across, as an artist, is the ability to create a colour
palette that is intentional but perceived as natural. When looking at a
painting, say of a grassy landscape, it may feel effortless or innate at first
glance, however that artist chose those colours to make you think a certain way
about that specific landscape. Maybe he wants you to feel more recognizable
emotions such as joy or despair, or maybe he’s tapping into deeper triggers like
a false sense of nostalgia. “But how can a colour palette produce nostalgia
when everyone has different upbringings?” That’s a perfect example of a
question that the artist might have to ask themself while researching for a
painting.
Colour is a really easy thing to immerse yourself into in
the real world because it’s quite literally everywhere. Travelling, as a secondary tier, is a great way to explore how different cultures use colour to their advantage
and send a specific message to everyone within it. When I did a South Caribbean
cruise a couple years back, I noticed in Barbados that the houses share similar
warm and tropical hues like coral, teal, and oranges - lots of sunset and sea
vibes. About a year and a half ago in Thailand, I noticed a theme of exposed
wood paired with gold and red paint. The red was very intense next to the
natural wood of the houses and complementary with the green foliage it was
surrounded by.
Reykjavík, Iceland
16 August, 2017
Iceland was an incredible place to truly feel the colours of
the environment. The landscape is so vast and subdued in places that the houses
are painted these bright colours to stand out against it. Also, Iceland’s
culture, like all countries, is heavily relied on its settlers. In this case,
Irish, Scandenavian, and Norse (the last two are NOT the same thing). Variations
of reds, blues, and yellows canvas the towns. Primary colours are very
whimsical and notoriously expected in Scadenavian and Dutch countries. Not only
were the buildings in Reykjavik painted in a wide variety of Nordic-inspired
colours, but the shadows have so much more presence. Because of how far north
Iceland sits, the sun is far closer to the horizon during the day, therefore,
it’s blasting longer and darker shadows everywhere. The contrast of the buildings
and natural formations made the photographs on my DSLR camera in rare need of a
touch up. So, as well as when you’re looking at colour within a space, notice
the shadows and ambience the sun is creating within that environment. Also, pay
attention to the colour of the shadows, because they’re definitely not black.
Unless they’re creating a black abyss of a shape with which you cannot identify
anything within, they’re not black. They’re also not just a darker version of
the colour they’re sharing a building or object with. The next time you look at
the shadow of an object in natural light, try and find it’s complementary
colour within it. You’d be surprised to actually find hints of red within the
shadow of a grassy mountain.
Some artists use a technique called broken colour which is
where they break up the object in front of them and put in colours that aren’t
necessarily there in real life. This is where they gain complete control of
their audience. Those seemingly random blobs and crisp brush strokes are adding
to the overall effect of the painting. Broken colour also can be viewed as a
gateway to abstraction, which might help you gain more of a familiarity with the
idea behind abstract art. But that’s a whole other topic for a different time. Some
of my favorite examples of broken colour come from Carole Rabe, a
Massachusetts-based artist. She tends to paint very familiar and immediate
surroundings, which makes a great reference for those of you that are trying to
further familiarize yourselves with abstracting colour in subjective places. A practice that she uses, and a lot of other broken colour painters use, is making collages with painted paper. This allows the artist to break the space down by planar structures to determine what colour goes where. Sometimes it's hard to see where colour starts and stops because you're too busy focusing on what the object is. My
best tip for experiencing colour abstractly in a situation that is very
familiar is to squint down your eyes so tight where everything is blurry. The
less recognizable the object is, the easier it is to see its color palette. Artists
look like they’re frowning all the time because they’re busy squinting their
eyes at everything they look at. That or they just need more coffee.
Night Living Room
Carole Rabe
oil on canvas, 20x20
Hat on Chair
Carole Rabe
painted paper collage, 12x12
I heavily encourage everyone to travel so that they can see
colour and spaces in a very alternative format from what they’re used to. The
climate is different, the subject matter is different, and the cultural
influences are completely different. Colour in our everyday surroundings ends up inspiring the work that artists create. If you're an artist, look at colour to inspire work. If you're not an artist and art scares you a little, look at colour to practice looking at art in a gallery setting. Bottom line, the next time you’re in another state
or country crossing off list items on that summer bucket list you stole off of
Pinterest, stop for a minute, take a walk, and just appreciate the place for
what it is as a whole. Appreciate the existence of it, appreciate the shadows
of the existing objects, appreciate the weather (rain or shine), appreciate the
random faces, or lack of, walking past you, and appreciate the color.
Cheers,
Gem x
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