Taste the Color

Sometimes the biggest inspiration for a painting is feeling a color.  It's like what my friend Mr. Romo (an amazing painter) told me at his studio one day..."don't stop painting in black and white until you can taste the color".  He said his teacher had told him that.  Usually people start painting in black and white I guess.  I started right away with color myself.  If anything I want to backtrack and try painting in gray, black and white, sepia more.  Yesterday blue was calling to me though...cobalt and aqua were it and I 'needed' to paint with them.  Color is more of a feeling than a taste to me.  So I painted this butterfly.

Then I felt purple but more than purple I felt like I needed to paint a dragonfly.  So I painted this dragonfly next.

Some interesting symbolism for these paintings...both butterflies and dragonflies represent change since they are creatures of the wind.  Specifically butterflies symbolize the soul, transformation, and young love.  Dragonflies represent change, dreaming, prosperity and good luck.

With both of these paintings I was loving the ease of a small canvas.  I enjoy painting on small canvases because it feels like creating a tiny fantasy world...just a glimpse of it.  But large canvas painting is still my love, even though I can never get the pictures to capture the true essence of the painting.  So much is lost in my art behind that lens.  This is a Dandelion Delirium painting I did the other day, which I love, but even as I varnished it and looked at the rich purples and nuances of the white dandelion details I knew so much had been lost in the photograph.

I find I am craving a rainy day painting next.  I want to do a gray background with gray water and somehow hope to capture the look of clouds actually raining...that misty droplet combo that is amazing.  To capture the wet ground look.  I want to have a woman in a Victorian dress and red umbrella in the foreground, her hair blowing in the wind.  I'm working on subtleness in some of my pieces now and using color to accentuate a focus more...I want this painting to be very gray/black/white with the woman and her umbrella in red standing out.

Maybe tasting the color is something that should be tempered, like an acquired taste.  But there will still be days when I will just want a painting to be all about the vivid blue or purple.