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To the right are two paintings I did when I was taking a bath and looking at the shampoo bottles on the window sill. In the
above painting I deliberately didn't use white because schools and teachers generally frown upon the use of white and black
in works involving color. Artist don't like general rules though. I know, for sure, black is a necessity for me and I use
it to pop other colors off of it (Howard Hodgkin is the master of using black to intensify color) This problem was magnified
with the impressionists who were the first to use a white ground (gesso) instead of the darker grounds of the older masters.
The impressionists wanted the white of their ground to reflect through their paints to create as well as capture light. The
pansy Renoir went to the extreme and didn't use black at all and it wasn't until the end of his life that he realized that
black was the "queen of all colors." Today teachers yell at students because neophytes have the tendency to use
black and white disproportionately. Students tend to use black and white as a crutch and never really look at the infinite
color that surround us equally. Shadows are not black. Anywho, white has a tendency to wash out color along with the beauty
we associate with it. I feel these paintings demonstrate this well. The painting above is more beautiful in color and has
more of an atmosphere. However, the white (actually a lot of the white in this painting is a silver paint I found) in the
painting below creates a stonger contrast- another important element I feel is essential to my work. By the way, both of these
paintings are at the same time of day around noon on an overcast day. Not sure which one is better. What do you think?
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