Joe ~ May 24

 

Color

 

As I delve into my artwork I am struck by my total awe of color. The paintings that I have just finished are flush with a broad palette of cool to warm hues that when juxtaposed to one another have glorious results. What a gift!!! Color…I have so taken it for granted like so many aspects of life. It seems only right that as part of our childhood education there should have been an intense segment on the senses. How truly wondrous to listen to sound: pitch, vibration and melody…to smell the the myriad odors that our olfactory nerves allow us to receive and interpret as to whether they are friend or foe…To feel the textures and surfaces that are encountered by our simple touch: hot, cold, pain, wet and dry…to be without would be like living in an alien world and denied the pleasure of the most magnificent ability. The smell of bacon as it’s frying in the pan or the the aroma of fresh baked cookies or even that skunk that was spooked in your driveway last night and sprayed the local cat with it’s acrid and pungent scent that although definitely repelling, is at at the same time a treat for a nose looking for stimulation. And the most treasured of my particular senses is sight. The miraculous event every time I open my eyes and am treated to a a plethora of color and light. It is beyond my limited understanding how these so called, windows of the soul, can record in real time, light reflection on surfaces and create an ever changing prism of eternal color that always is changing and never the same twice. As a seventh grader, I was enrolled in an adult painting and drawing course run by a master painter by the name of Nicolo Cortiglia. The other artists in the group were all much older and certainly more skillful. I was working on a simple still life and using pastel chalks to render this picture. He looked over my shoulder and stared intently at my drawing and how I was capturing color. He smiled and asked me where that came from and did I realize what a gift I had in my vision of color. This was the first time someone had noticed that there was more to capturing reflected light to form images for a piece of art. Claude Monet is regarded as one of, if not the greatest, impressionistic artists in all of history. As he become older his eyes started to fail him. Cataracts compromised his ability to read the colors that surrounded him. Some say that this affliction was evident in his water Lilly paintings. He had surgery to correct his sight. It took s very long time for him to heal and when he did he was able to see the ultra violet colors which were bright reds and yellows and his work disgusted him to the point of destroying these paintings. I use his example to illustrate how important and invaluable sight is. How it can be in full flower one day and start to fade the next. Gratitude doesn’t seem to be enough. Capturing this magic so it can be viewed by others is a beginning. And so, like all my senses that I cam immerse my spiritual self into and practice the actions that give witness to me that there is much to be explored and grasped in this finite period of being.