A sight for sore eyes?

 

It's true.  I did feel very relaxed, sitting beside the empty skating rink at North Van's Shipyards, in the aftermath of a heavy rainfall.  But that was mostly because, after dental work, I could again drink hot coffee. (Oh, she does go on about that, doesn't she?)   As an example of whiteness, though, it might or might not have been beneficial for my eyes – the debate rages among manufacturers of LED lighting fixtures, depending on their products.  Warm white!  Cool white!

 

Whatever.  My eyes certainly needed a little respite after dealing with all those Spectral Creatures in a series that I really should have planned more carefully.

 

 It's a little as if they unleashed something – like books that I happen on in the library:

 

Random happenings that recall the perplexing question: What does violet really look like?

 

Just in time to decide what I'd do next, I had a bright idea.  A very BIG one:

 

How about that for a lightbulb flash?  As it happened, I'd read recently about the official and controversial Pantone Color of the Year – a very special white they call "Cloud Dancer."

 

This came along just as I was reviewing old notes and sketchbooks and came across a long-held inspiration to convene some famous "Girls in White Dresses."   From my sketchbook list, I pulled Monet's "Woman with Parasol (Mme. Monet)" and "On the Strand at Trouville," Degas' "The Invalid," and Thayer's "Angel" – shown here on my laptop screen for your quick reference.

 

My intent was to group and "copy" these models, and there would certainly be challenges:  How to put them together in a satisfying composition?  How to offset each white dress, especially challenging when one might be placed against another?  Well, here's a first step:

 

I kept hoping that, with each small colour addition, the way would become clear.

 

But it was here that I reached a decision point.  It was time to invite a few more of these gals, give them their own panel, and treat the two panels together as a diptych.  Here's a quick capture of the second group of white dresses:  Whistler's "Symphony in White,"Liepke's "The Midnight Salon,"  Holbein's "Anna Meyer," and Toulouse-Lautrec's "The Hangover."

 

An early lay-in:

 

A little more development brought this to the stage where I could decide which panel of the diptych would be which (right or left). 

 

The possibilities were:

 

I chose the first alignment, worked a little more, and then came the deep sigh that means……now what???

 

Okay, for the last act, I decided to let loose with pattern, the design element that always makes me feel better, whether or not it looks better.  Here's the grand finale, with the two panels side by side:

 

It's all been a learning experience, right?  The influential 19^th-20^th century art dealer Ambroise Vollard wrote, "Renoir said once that nothing was so difficult to paint, and at the same time so exciting, as white on white."

 

I'll keep that in mind if I ever try this again.  For now, I'll briefly hold the thought that simple can be better than complex.  The week after the marvelous huge lightbulb gave me too many ideas, a city workman parked his "cherry picker" almost in front of my house.  Attracted by the whir of his lift, I was just in time to see one man, in one truck, with one light fixture, replacing one street lamp.  As simple as that!  What a good idea!

 

Seeing the world through violet-coloured glasses

 

We've really come full circle now, with almost as many questions about the colour violet as with the earlier colour indigo. What does violet really look like?  Like lavender? Lilac? Mauve? Amethyst? Burgundy?

 

This portion of the fresco unearthed in Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries  offers a range of possibilities.

 

Less complicated, this example of the colour field paintings of 20^th c. artist Mark Rothko offers a simpler choice.

 

Going back to Square One, I'm going to invoke Sir Isaac Newton, who devised the colour wheel as a way to visualize the sequence and relationships of colours in the spectrum.

 

Then, two centuries later, there's Johannes Itten who spent just as much time and effort, splashing among the colours and formulating exercises and structures to frame them.

 

Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall – or maybe a purple ground beetle outside the window – if these two colour theorists could be brought together?

 

Well, that's what I decided to do for the final piece in the Spectral Creatures series – borrow some violet tones (leaning towards red-violet) and put Isaac and Johannes in their midst.  The preliminary layout:

 

The first layers of colour:--

 

And the final painting:  "The Theoreticians" – Spectral Series, copyright 2026.

 

What a somber twosome!  In contrast, let's find some joyously beautiful violet spin-offs from master artists.  Just in time for the start of this series, my friend Y sent me a beautiful Hungarian postage stamp with a painting titled, "Lady in Purple" by fascinating early 20^th c. artist Pal Szinyei Merse. 

 

And who can resist Matisse's "Woman in a Violet Coat"?

 

This series has had its ups and downs (greys and whites?) but it's been rewarding for the time I've spent focussed on colour choices and colour mixing.  With a pat on the back to all who have stuck with me, let me quote John Ruskin:-- 

 

"The purest and most thoughtful minds are

 those which love colour the most."

 

How colour meets the eye

 

A neighbour's grey weathered back yard tent doesn't look like much.  But – what if?  Just imagine if it were a lovely medium shade of lavender.  Since my right-eye cataract surgery late last month, I haven't needed to imagine – that's just how it appears to my right eye!  (As a sidebar, individuals can perceive colours differently, and here's an interesting synopsis on that subject).

 

As my "Spectral" series is rounding another bend in the colour wheel, I've given hours of thought to just what's happening between red and blue.  Not a day goes by that I don't see another example of purplish hues.  Even right outside my eye doctor's office!

 

Yet Sir Isaac Newton's colour wheel, as it's come down to us, has no purple.  As introduced in my Grade 7 science class, its seven colours make the acronym "Roy G. Biv".   Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet.

 

Here we are at indigo, and I ask:  What colour IS that, anyway?  Take a look at the cover of educator Betty Edwards' very useful book:

 

…and at my long-ago exercise, suggested by another source:-- Assigning paint pigment samples to their places on the wheel.  (Did you notice that RED is sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right?  That's a hot debate I don't want to know about).

 

Okay.  I'm going to translate "indigo" as the blue-purple hue that Crayola added to its crayon choices in its expanded mid-1950s box (another childhood gift that I remember!)  This article validates this view.

 

And we're off, with this early stage:

 

Oh, sigh.  The research had been more fun than the production, and I was finding this all a bit boring.  But my deadline was closing in so I simply put a face in the midst and called it a day:  "Indigo Unveiled" (Spectral Series, copyright 2026)

 

Then I went searching for a known artist's work in the same colour and, very coincidentally, found this face by Edward Burne-Jones. 

In a deeper tone, here's a figure in a rich blue-purple dress by artist Kees van Dongen. 

 

Let's end this exploration of the colour indigo with a salute to artist Louise Bourgeois who said:

"Art is a way of recognizing one's self."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue without limits

 

Next up in the "Spectral" series is the colour blue -- always my favourite.  For years, before my finger knuckles became unpredictable (some too knobby, some too thin), my trademark piece of jewelry was a ring of lapis lazuli stone mounted in silver.  The colour was sublime, and I've always loved the fact that lapis is the historic source of the paint pigment Ultramarine Blue.  From the same era as my ring, I made a birthday splurge on one small tube of a fine quality "genuine" ultramarine:--

 

Nowadays, the ultramarine of artists' pigment is a chemical mix, and lapis is most likely to be found at rockhounds' stores.  How could I resist a very cheap chunk that I came across at a hobbyists' show a few years ago?

 

Ultramarine is only one of a dozen or more artists' blues.  I have just some of them in my studio.

 

Some notables in the art world have become obsessed with it.  The artist/teacher/theorist Johannes Itten is almost synonymous with colour studies.  In his famous book "The Art of Color," he investigated the "behavioural" qualities of colours – where they fit and how they interact -- and proposed spiritual and psychological correspondences for each.

 

The earlier 20^th century artist Franz Marc also proposed symbolic meanings for different colours – and won my heart in my teenaged years with his series of blue horses. 

 

As I considered What to Do with Blue, a woman who was indubitably spectral showed up at a meeting I was attending.  I admired and complimented her wild fluffy hair and, with a laugh, she told me that someone had come up to her and asked if her tufts were actually feathers. I couldn't quite capture her image when I sketched at home from memory. 

 

She was irresistible, though, and I knew my Creative Packrat's hoard would offer some helpful bounty:--  the crinkly paper packing material that sometimes replaces plastic, and some fabric remnants from my all-time favourite blouse.

 

A swatch of plastic netting that contained a half-dozen avocadoes helped get me started – oh, and the plastic lid of a samosa sauce container.

 

Moving right along:--

 

Suddenly, at this stage, I was reminded of an early Renaissance painting by Rogier van der Weyden:-- 

 

VanGogh's Breton women crowd in on this association, too.

Here's my final version, with all its faults:  "Portrait of a Rare Bird with Feathers" – Spectral Series (copyright 2026).

 

Looking for a blue painting by a known (or little-known!) artist, I had lots to choose from.  How about "Portrait of a Lady in Blue" by Rembrandt Peale?  (That's no joke – his siblings in this noted early American family were named Raphaelle, Rubens, and Titian).

 

If you're feeling joyfully awash with blue at this point, you might want to check out short-lived 20^th century artist Yves Klein who said, "Blue has no dimensions.  It is beyond dimensions."  

 

He experimented with over a hundred pigment mixes to finally create what's internationally known as Klein Blue.   Along the way, he was the first and not last to use the human body to apply paint!  If you're now really keen to experience the Full Klein, check the video here for his sculpted blue sponges!

 

Whew!  What a journey this is, whizzing around the spectrum circle.  Meanwhile, a friend has helpfully reminded me of Emily Dickinson's brief poem that begins, "Hope is a thing with feathers."  Let's hold that thought as we keep rolling along.