Week 4- Vermillion

There's no denying the heat of vermillion....the fire of stomach acids in digestive transformation; the fire that keeps a house warm in winter; the humbling, trembling awe one feels when they know themselves to be on the threshold between life and death, earth and spirit, power and humility.

Vermillion is lively and energetic....
"Friday I tasted life.  It was a vast morsel
 a circus passed the house- still I feel 
the Red in my mind though the drums are out..."  Emily Dickinson

Scarlet (or Vermillion) makes a dramatic impact by 

seeming to 'come towards us'- this is known as color perspective. 

 Warm bright red can almost leap off the page.  

Bringing red into a painting is a challenge."

-Colour Dynamics by Angela Lord

Indeed, bringing vermillion into a painting IS a challenge and I always go back to the Renaissance painter Fra Angelico. He captures the awe, the amazement, the deepest soul trembling by painting vermillion in moments where spiritual threshold events are experienced.    

I paint frequently in vermillion and red but am never quite satisfied with the result.  It always feels "too much.  It is as if the painting says... "I'm done....move on to something else."  Balancing the composition with blue or green could be a great solution.  Worth a try in the next vermillion painting!

Next week it is orange!  Somehow I feel a bit of relief moving out of this red zone:)

Week 3- Red

I don't think I purposely avoided the color 'red' this week, and I wasn't more busy than I usually am....but I just didn't get around to being in the 'red'.  I perused older photos, looked at a red painting I did several years ago, and looked at old notes.

In a way...red seems to be ancient, something of a far distant past and yet it is also the heat of right here and now.   This color wants to move boldly.  Like the ancient drum, red can hold the beat of time for all other creative rhythms to come in and go out while its steadfast consistent pulse allows the primal releasing for all things to be born.

It is unhurried but with deep moving power and seems to state, I AM HERE.  In that statement there is strength and inner movement...yet you do not need to go anywhere!  

 It is the womb in which the creative seed of new life is held. 

 It is the sweet joy of love...

and the  bittersweet feeling of a heart breaking in love.

It's scent is that of a red rose

 ...an inner drive pushing against gravity into the wide expanse of blue.

Red is nourishing and nurturing

Out of magenta's mercy and compassion, red arises in service.  A service to care for the earth with the work of our hands....a service to care for one another with the work of our hearts.

Magenta- Lovingkindness

"My religion is kindness" - the Dalai Lama

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower,
and retell it in words and in touch,
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing

-Galway Kinnell from his poem 'Saint Francis and the Sow'


"Looking at the positive in others is a form of self-blessing."
-Sharon Salzberg   Loving Kindness


Magenta's compassion and mercy, it's uniting quality, bringing us into a whole...into oneness and can be experienced gazing at a magenta blossom.  Flanked by the earthly green,  the unfolding day in all its practicality gives one the feeling that all is right in the world.  Out of heaven we are born and here on earth we blossom in word and deed.  No wonder the magenta and green, despite their contrasting positions on the color wheel, make for such a great partnership of color.  In the spring of 2014 I visited the botanical gardens in Fort Bragg, Ca where the rhododendrons were at the height of their bloom. The archways of magenta and green were calming, peaceful and relaxing.

Week 2 Magenta and Hummingbird

Magenta is a color of new beginnings... a new day, a newborn baby, spring.  It is soft and gentle.  What an astonishing contrast to see a magenta flower with prickly cactus like thorns.  The polarity in nature's creation is appealing in its perfection.

Light and Dark, Straight Line and Curve, Form Drawing

Light has something of a straight line about it.  On a given day I can see light and its reflections, but I don't see it curve or wrap around an object.  Sometimes in the evening sunset I can see rays of light break through the clouds as straight lines.

Darkness has something curved about it.  It envelops the space, curls and moves.  It is the opposite of the light.  Together, we have lines and curves.  Form and space.  On the first day of first grade in a Waldorf school the students are often introduced to the line and the curve in their form drawing class. The children notice in their environment where they see a line, as they also notice in the upright human being! They also discover where there are curves.  One begins to 'see' forms in a new way. These lines and curves mix and intermingle. Indeed, the whole world becomes an artistic adventure of perceiving lines and curves as objects and space....the world we live in!

Form drawing ... " is part of the evolution of art and, as such, develops an aesthetic sense and feeling for form. " (My emphasis added) (Form Drawing: Grades One through Four by Laura Embry-Stine and Ernst Schubert)

Betty Edwards in her book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain likens the left hemisphere of the brain to the more linear way of thinking and the right side of the brain to more spatial orientation.  I believe that a balance between light and dark, form and space, line and curve, left brain/right brain offers a picture of a very balanced human being living on a healthy, balanced planet where creativity arises between thinking and doing. Betty Edwards emphasizes that in the world of today, and in education, there is an overemphasis on intellectual thinking with left-hemishphere activity which deadens the creative potential of an individual!  Form drawing is just one artistic activity that can be explored to balance the polarities of light and dark, left and right...

"There are many sound reasons which support the feeling that form drawing is good for children (and adults...that's my addition).  The simplest and perhaps most straight-forward reason is that it develops the fine motor skills as a preparation, and later as a support, for writing.  It strengthens the eye-hand coordination, giving the eye practice at being coachman for the horses, the hands.  Form drawing also works in the other direction: The movement of the hand to the brain.  It also teaches thinking but in a non-intellectual way; it trains the intelligence to be flexible, able to follow and understand a complicated line of thought.  The more human beings are trained to think flexibly, the greater the world is strengthened in intelligence."  Form Drawing: Grades One Through Four by Laura Embry Stine and Ernst Schubert

The following three pictures are examples of form drawing from a 2nd grader.  The next three pictures are examples of precision drawing by a 6th grader.  Even though they are drawn in color, the feeling of light and darkness, line and curve, form and space are all there.

Characteristics of Darkness and Light with a Poem

I ended my last post with several questions: What characterizes darkness?  What characterizes light?  In a given day, how does one carry the warmth of darkness and the objectivity of light throughout the day? 



Warmth of darkness is a good night's sleep, deep rest and a sense of rejuvenation when one wakes up. There is a quiet that resides in darkness that is healing.  No wonder the age old wisdom to rest when sick remains true today.

Lois Schroff in her book Physical and Spiritual Experience of Color says, "Darkness is the invisible all carrying mother of substance.  The warmth and security of the mother's womb, the place where seeds wait for the right condition for sprouting, a cocoon wound round and round to keep away the light until the time arrives for birthing- all of these are times of darkness."

Light is waking in the brightness of a new day...or it can be the reflected sun's light on the moon.  It's a an idea...maybe even 'brilliant.'  We use the phrase, "the lightbulb went on" when we have a new understanding of something. One could say there is light in our thinking. Ueli Seiler Hugova writes, "Light is invisible, so no one has ever seen it.  It remains invisible until it falls on a physical object.  Light has something of the straight line about it.  It causes reflections and turns the world into a counter world, an object.  Out of primordial foundation, light begets the world of external reality, the visible world.

Rather than in a given day.... how does history hold darkness and light?

Darkness-moving warmth

ancient lore, magical rites

existence of God

Mythology dawns

pictures in my heart

Human Being! Oh flame of Love!

Modern mind awake!

Thought consciousness choice

Peril? or Freedom?

Week 1 -Beginning with Darkness and Light

Before starting into the color wheel it seems appropriate to begin with darkness.  Even in Genesis and many creation stories the beginning begins in darkness.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  Genesis 1:1-2

Darkness is formless... we can know this when we are outside with a new moon in the country where there are no lights.  It appears to be pitch black.  We may know that trees exist around us but we cannot differentiate the forms in the pure darkness.

And then when we add light..

"Light and darkness are the Primordeal Creators.  They form the great cosmic polarity from which at the beginning of time all creation originated." Lianne Collot d'Herbois 

With charcoal I explored darkness as the center and how it evenly dissipates as it extends itself, reaching for the light.

And again with charcoal I explored the darkness graciously moving to the sides with light in the center.

What characterizes darkness?  What characterizes light?  In a given day, how does one carry the warmth of darkness and the objectivity of light throughout the day?