Day Eighty-Nine/Image Eighty-Nine

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

Color relationships. Color is only a color when it is next to another color. For instance, tan can become orange when next to a bluish color. And tan’s orange-ness is washed out when placed near white. In fact, white sucks all color out of what it is placed against. When you are painting a room and you look at a color chip (surrounded by white on the card), the shade appears on the card a shade lighter than it will be when you put the color on the walls. So choose a shade or two lighter than the one you like on the paint store chip card.

I learned color from a disciple of Josef Albers, who made studying color his life’s work. Fred Gregory was in Yale’s M.F.A. program.

I met Fred when I was taking postgraduate classes at Atlanta College of Art. I was in the last Color Theory class Fred taught before he died. I feel lucky to have learned all the things I did: fusion of two different colors, vibration between two colors, a third color appearing between two colors. How to make two different colors look the same when surrounded by two colors. How to make the same color look different surrounded by two colors.

At any rate, color is only color, in relationship to other colors.