With color

I am finding out, once again, how important color is to me.  I had painted one wall in my kitchen a beautiful shade of dark blue.  I love the color.  But I was always uncomfortable looking at it.  It was too heavy for that particular wall.  So last week I redid it, painted it a rich shade of grey, and now I am enjoying being near it, looking at it, cooking around it.  Strange how important color can be.

Now my need to redo the colors in my house is traveling down the stairs to my studio.  I put that intense, beautiful dark blue at the end of the stairwell, just by the studio door.  It looks perfect there.  I also painted some of the walls going down the stairs a lighter, warmer shade of blue, like a robin’s egg.

Now I have two more long walls to do in the stairwell and that will be it for choosing new colors.  It is amazing what the right shade of color can do.  There is an app now for the iPad with Josef Albers Interaction of Color exercises in it.  I have the book.  And I studied with him.  So I have done all the exercises.  They were invaluable.  At the time, I didn’t think I would ever understand what he was trying to teach.  After about two months, and the tutelage of a fellow student, I came to take it in and it is now a major part of my painting process.  Just how important placement, amount and hue can be.  Like everything else in life.  But here, just color.