A Question of Colour How many shades can a walnut be? What is the colour of a healthy liver? How can you describe the perfect ripe strawberry? What shade do you want your car to be? Or your hair? Or the walls in your living room? How can you measure the colour of pies? How do you explain the gleam of Chinese green-ware or the ruby-like resonance of a glass of saffron tea? How to describe the exact shade of a colour to somebody half way around the world? People talk about " barn red " and "lipstick red " but what does that mean anyway? How many colours are in a rainbow? It really depends on whether you count the shades where the colour changes from one to the other. Issac Newton was a scientist to whom the number seven was significant. There were seven planets (others had not been spotted yet), there were seven days of the week, seven musical notes, and he was damned if there were not going to be seven colours of the spectrum. Curiously, in China there were believed to be five elements, five tastes, five musical notes and five colours (black, white, red, yellow and blue, so the idea of coinciding numbers is shared between two cultures, even if the numbers themselves are different. Depending on where you live, a colour can have a name set to it through history, symbolism, nature, fashion or the whim of the artistes mixture. Lawrence Herbert (sometimes called the colour king) stated in 1956m "My dream is that someone should be able to call a supplier in California from their home an Acapulco and say I`d like to buy a rose pink paint or whatever and that when it arrives it was exactly right". Colour is personal. Love and hate are strong words yet these are the emotions that arise. Everyone has a colour they love and a colour they hate. At Cactus Station we explore the above thoughts and many more in our efforts to be better, more educated artists. Why do we see red? Where did indigo come from? What is the history of yellow? How many colours are there between green and blue? Happy Trails Carolyn Findlay |
Call for more information on: Acrylic decorative art class projects.
Thursday Night Acrylic's - This 3 hour evening class is for all levels of painters from 6:30pm - 9:30pm. Most projects are suitable for the beginner to the intermediate skill level although the advanced painter can always add her own extra touches to any project. Projects will vary from 1, 2 or 3 weeks depending on the subject matter. Surfaces may be purchased from the Cactus Station display room or you may bring your own. As we do not all have the same tastes, the pattern will be able to be adjusted to a number of different surfaces |
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