White
I missed my blog color yesterday. Friday was the day to take everything and more out of my studio and to the MV Kirkland, the old 1929 ferry to decorate for our auction which is happening this evening, Saturday. It was a lot of work but I had an incredible crew. I'm in awe at the help we're getting!
White is the color today. And just as black is the absence of color, white is, scientifically, the presence of all color. I know. It sounds crazy especially if you're an artist and have spent decades mixing oil paint. The more colors you mix, actually the muddier and grayer the color becomes.
I know my experiences and science don't really agree. I have sons that have given up arguing with me on such notions. I was watching a video game that someone was playing and having a fit because the color combinations did not make sense. Not according to pigment. I was out numbered. Science is indeed taking over.
Therefore, white in my eyes reflects my life, my concepts, my experience.
White is the light of the presence watching over me. A guide, a goal, the end of the tunnel that answers all my questions and resolves all my fears. White is the candle that lights the night.
Night Watch painting by Dianne Gardner
White is the color of the unicorn, the angel, the dreams which take root in childhood and carry on throughout our lives, returning in magnitude as we grow old.
Love Promised painting by Dianne Gardner
White is the background on which we paint our lives, our beginning, our youth, our innocence.
Mom painting by Dianne Gardner
White is all that can ever be, all that we wish to be, all that we strive to be. White is hope.
*I also want to make a disclaimer. Someone way back when started giving completely erroneous labels to skin color. I have never seen a white person nor have I seen a black person. Darker and lighter, yes. My skin is kind of an olive color, a mix of orange and yellow neutralized by green in some places, and blue in others (ask my art students, they'll tell you). Different races of people will have different temperatures of color, alizerin crimson mixed with yellow ochre perhaps, or chromium oxide green combined with an naphthalene red and hansa yellow. You won't find me referring to races when I speak of black and white. My eyes are trained better than that.