As you'll discover, I have a complex relationship with color. Color selection locks an object or space in a moment of time, and dominates over the daylight which gives a visual presence to the passage of time. Lisa Robertson presented research on color and time as a decade by decade look at color in Vancouver in her poetic book, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (Clear Cut Press).
Form gives a sense of purpose or intention to color. The drawing below is a layout for murals in the Weimar State Bauhaus by Oskar Schlemmer in 1923 (courtesy e-flux). I love the complexity and clarity.
And below is a segment of a fresco in Baker Library at Dartmouth College by Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, 1932-1934. Though drastically different, I find them equally motivational: technical proficiency yields freedom of expression. Learn, intern, learn!!
From a note from the artist:"IN every painting, as in any other work of art, there is always an IDEA, never a STORY. The idea is the point of departure, the first cause of the plastic construction, and it is present all the time as energy creating matter. The stories and other literary associations exist only in the mind of the spectator, the painting acting as the stimulus. ...
It is unnecessary to speak about TRADITION. Certainly we have to fall in line and learn our lesson from the Masters. If there is another way it has not been discovered yet. It seems that the line of Culture is continuous, without shortcuts, unbroken from the unknown Beginning to the unknown End. But we are proud to say now: This is no imitation, this is our OWN effort, to the limit of our own strength and experience, in all sincerity and spontaneity."
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