Dear Planksters,
I hope you are having an enjoyable summer!
For the last couple of weeks, I have been pondering on a comment I read on Twitter, which follows on from a previous blog I penned, where I looked at the power of just one colour.
It was made by the artist, Lee Bebbington (@artbybebbs - do check out his work! https://mobile.twitter.com/artbybebbs ) Towards the end of July, Lee shared a work in progress of a yellowish building that he was painting and I was struck by just how many colours made up that one colour. Regarding this, in the comments, Lee mentioned that he had heard a talk by David Hockney where he had said that you should “Really Look”. This got me thinking and whilst I’m not sure what the actual quote was, I did find this one from an article on the Van Gogh Museum website from David Hockney in 2018, where he said:
“Lots of people just scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, but they don't really look at things. Van Gogh really looked.”
You can read the article here https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/hockney-van-gogh-two-painters-one-love#9 it's well worth the visit!
In my blog about the power of just one colour, I looked at whole scenes that appeared as one colour, for example, a vista of all green - fields, trees, grasses, or a view of the sea on a summer’s day – all blue!
So today I’m looking at the opposite, colours that look like just one colour, but that on closer inspection, when you have ‘really looked’, are in fact, several! When out walking these last few days, it’s been so enjoyable to spot an object of interest, note its colour and then take a closer look! There are colours galore, Planksters!
Take these examples, I ran each photo through a colour palette generator and it only gave me the option of five colours, but I’m sure the discerning eye can spot a lot more!
The artist Paul Gauguin (1891- 1903 is known for having said;
“It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable colour to every object; beware of this stumbling block.”
So, I for one, will be on my guard and when I see a red rose or a green blade of grass, I’m going to do as David Hockney advises and ‘Really look’!
With aspirations for performing a graceful ‘cartwheel’, that rapidly descends into the reality of the awkward half ‘bunny hop’,
Thalamus Plank
Love this! At university we were told to go on a "wide eyed walk" around the city. The objective was to look at the things nobody notices. I hadn't really thought about it in terms of colours before, but I will now.