What White?

Today I was looking at white objects again and took more photos, this time of the ceiling of my studio. The mixture of the white panels of metal, sunlight and florescent light change the colour of the “white” ceiling. In some places the white is more blue and in others it is more yellow, you only see these colours when you take the time to really look. Tomorrow I am going to start mixing the colours I’ve seen today and create a colour palette I can use in the future.

Its not all Black and White.

After another group tutorial this afternoon I was spurred on to get on with some work. I’ve gathered up similar coloured objects from around the studio and placed them together to see how similar/dissimilar they are to each other. In our everyday lives we only give colour a cursory glance, we may look at a wall momentarily call it “white” and not give it another thought. However what happens when we collect all the “white” things and put them together? They are not all the same colour white.

First day back.

Today was nerve racking and exciting, however my nerves were calmed a little after having a group discussion with my tutor about what I plan to do with my third and final year of this course.

I will be looking at colour. I have already been looking at natural colour palettes taken from the sky, and have a vast range of photographs of sunsets and sun rises where I have been taking and selecting my colours from. Having photos has helped me to precisely mix the colours I need. With these colours I have been creating gradients of colour, blending one into the other to replicate that of the sky.

What I aim to do this year:

• firstly is to experiment with video, with the existing paintings I have have already created. Using a camera I would like to start zoomed into the centre of one of my round pieces and gently draw back introducing the surrounding colours as it moves backwards, and vice versa eliminating colours as it moves forward. Playing around with the speeds at which the camera moves in and out may or may not effect the way the colours respond with each other, also blurring may be another factor that may me interesting to explore.

video experiment 1, video experiment 2, video experiment 3

• Inspired by a fellow students work on colour, in particular her colour work on green has made me think about how we see. The human eye can see more different shades of green than any other colour due to evolution. A bbc documentary suggests and researches that the language we use to categorise colour may also make us see the world differently. The Himba tribe in Namibia have half as many words as we do to describe colours, Zoozu which are dark colours such as red blue green and purple, Vapu which is white and some yellows, Borou which is green and blue, Dumbo which contains greens reds and browns. I would like to look into this with more depth and try to fully understand it, as I think it may be a good source of inspiration for future work.

Do you see what I see documentary

• there are many artists to look at in relation to the work I am doing on colour, James Turrell uses light and the sky a lot in his work to create spaces that challenges the audience and how they see. David Batchelor explores ideas on how the decent from monochrome to colour in the modern day suggests the oriental, feminine and the seductive powers of colour. Others including Josef Albers, Mark Rothko, Wassily Kandinsky, Gerhard Richter and Robert Rauschenberg who are all important and inspiring to my work.

Now with a few starting points its now time to start getting some work done and grounding some ideas!

BRING IT ON!