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I have just read Wikipedia on colors scientifically, and though with some background in the sciences especially physics I was able to follow it and understood most of it, I will refrain from trying to illuminate my reading audience on the science of color. Let’s just say, “It’s complicated.”
I will instead stick to my relative expertise, as an artist and philosopher of art, on color.
What the heck is it, huh?! Just as in music, we have no or little idea why some colors (or sounds) make us feel a certain way. Why does Holst’s “The Planets,” “Mars,” make us feel that we are standing on the shores of Troy about to go to battle? Or Beethoven’s 9th Symphony make us want to fall to our knees — even atheists, admit it!-—in adoration at least to the Greeks’ Unknown God?
Color is the same as music here in that we really don’t know why it works this way on our nervous systems and our souls. We have energy vibrating at certain rates and then influencing cones in our physical eyes, and then this influence is transmitted, biochemically, to certain brain centers. Then, no doubt, it is further interpreted, hermeneutically and culturally by us, depending on our culture. Would the Eskimos, with their supposedly dozens to hundreds of names for snow, interpret white and gray colors differently than Floridians? The human being can see more than 10 million colors! That’s, I say as an artist, 10 million emotional grades.
We have six basic colors in our color spectrum: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and to Newton who we got this spectrum from, indigo, which not all people can recognize. Men have these break down further to three basic colors, and half of women and some animals to four basic colors. Reflectivity and absorption, and many, many, other factors influence our perceptions of color.
To an artist, white and black are also colors. What do they all mean? I’m going to wing it here on my two glasses of Red wine and with cool Vangelis music going and not worry too much about how technically right or wrong I may be!
I have studied color mixing and color charts many times, and honestly, I forget most of what I have learned consciously. I am known though in my art for interesting color combinations by scholars and artists, so I must know something intuitively. What is it though I cannot say, anymore than St. Augustine could say much about time- he famously said- from my memory at least that “ I know what it, is but when I am called upon to say what it is, I cannot”
A gifted realist artist recently asked me how I did my colors, and she said, “It was not at all like she learned in school.” She was a real master of chiaroscuro, and I couldn’t do what she did if my life depended on it. So I was humbled to quietude for once! I will say, though, that I don’t mix that carefully but add layer over layer recklessly at times. This no doubt leads to less than successful results at times, but when I look at many artists better than me technically, I too often see fear even great fear; just look at van Gogh’s last painting in the corn fields! Must we die to paint that fearlessly?!
So I will just speak with whatever very limited authority I might have.
White: Positivity, mystery, purity, simplicity, life, afterlife, angelic beings, creation, unity, oneness.
Black: Negation, death, darkness, mystery again, power, evil, harshness, contrast in itself.
Red: Life, blood, passion, power again, energy, fruit, war, fighting, sex, romance.
Orange: The name comes from the fruit by the way. Oranges, funniness, kinkiness, mod art, the 1960s, at least for us in the West, strangeness, goofiness.
Yellow: The sun, life again, in- your-face-ness, happiness, (though I think gradations of yellow can create anxiety in people!), more fruit, creation again, wow-ness!
Green: Nature, growth, trees and plants in general, sometimes sour emotions — you look “green” — cultural associations to Chagall’s faces in part, childbirth maybe.
Blue: Emotion, emotion, emotion, the sky, life again, our beautiful Earth and its seas and water in general, cleansing, purity again, some eyes, love, forgiveness, Mother Mary, night time..
Indigo/violet,-which I will combine into purple: Sacredness and spirituality, transformation, some fruits, mystery, some beautiful eyes, repentance.
I will add brown: Earth, earthiness, subtle subdued emotions, more beautiful eyes. Added to and mixed with reds, browns are possibly my favorite colors, along with certain blues.
It is interesting to note that judges of art contests state that the majority of monotone artworks are in blues and sepias. They are also my favorites, too. Think of Picasso’s Blue and Sepia Periods. He wasn’t often wrong, and he didn’t have Yellow or Green Periods. Maroon and dark royal blue are probably my favorite colors. I know a truly great artist named Eric who states categorically that he does not have a favorite color. I agree with his sincerity and his openness in color in his outstanding work. But I still see him more often in blue jeans and khaki pants, and not in purple or yellow ones. But maybe, and I say this seriously, that is different.
If I had to make all my work one color it would be a certain shade of blue or sepia and not green or yellow, though I often do make monotones in that color, too.
Suggestions for working creatively in color:
Especially if you’re working in not strictly realistic artwork, don’t worry about the perfect color! Be like Chagall. Maybe faces can be blue or green or red and not only black or brown or yellow.
Make a tree blue and not only green.
De-saturated colors imply reduced emotions and therefore emphasize form more. I like those more earthy colors, but many of my viewers like my more vibrant colors.
Suggestions: Mix colors playfully and use diluted glazes and work “wet in wet.” Not always, of course! If you want a large area of a certain color, by all means work carefully, but please at least work outside the coloring box.
Finally, I would suggest that black-and-white artwork emphasizes form and intellectuality. It is not that black-and-white work does not have any emotion in it, but I suggest that it is even there a thoughtful emotionality.
Just have fun with your colors like a little child. Van Gogh had a lot of knowledge technically of colors, but who can not see that he was thinking/feeling, “Wow! Look at those colors! What if I try this! Joy! Great joy!”
Like van Gogh, most of us will not make much money off of our art, but why not just have fun with it, great fun, wild fun, and just enjoy these fantastic 10 million colors and states of emotions?.
Play a Fugue of color in your own great art. Enjoy!
w
