Colour that works.

I love colour. I love bright colour. A recent collection of my landscape inspired paintings was zinging off the walls. I have a problem with colour. I am learning that it is possible to celebrate bright colour by surrounding it with something desaturated or, in my mind, dull.

I also love complementary colours, that are opposite each other on the colour wheel. They set each other off like no others and make me very happy. If I were to make a list of things that make me want to paint, and of course I have, complementary colour combinations would definitely be on it.

I have been playing with these two aspects of colour, complements and saturation. My series of boards has become ‘the pink and green one’, ‘the blue and orange one’ and ‘the purple and yellow one.

As I explore, I am gradually getting more sophisticated in my approach. I am now mixing colours rather than buying them, which is a humbling realisation. I suppose I was trapped in a narrow number of colour choices that I already knew would work. Now I am enjoying finding new mixtures.

I am really getting into desaturating a colour by adding a dash of its complement to it. If you put a bright colour next to it’s desaturated complement, it makes for some amazing combinations. I think I am almost getting trapped by it - ‘if it’s blue it must be orange’, but it does make me feel like I am getting somewhere.

The other important thing is to vary the value. Put a pale desaturated yellow next to a bright deep purple, see below, and you arrive at something really quite interesting. Colour really does make me want to paint and I am energised by this beginning.