Palette #23
After a fairly long break from painting, I've been thinking about the value of limitations.
When faced with endless possibilities, it's often easier to begin by making a few decisions in advance. For this small series, I set myself three simple constraints: to work on a modest scale, to mix colours directly from A Dictionary of Colour Combinations, Volume 2, and to paint using a brush.
The last of these may sound unremarkable, but for me it represents a significant shift. Much of my recent work has been made using sticks, twigs, grasses and improvised tools. Returning to a brush changes both the pace of the work and the marks that emerge.
Still life using Palette 23
Recently I acquired a copy of A Dictionary of Color Combinations, Volume 2, a Japanese colour reference book that includes palettes by month.
For this first experiment, I chose Palette 23, one of the palettes assigned to April. I carefully mixed the colours from the book and prepared enough paint for two small paintings.
Palette 223 from A Dictionary of Color Combinations, Volume 2
There was something surprisingly liberating about working within a predetermined set of colours. Rather than deciding what colours a painting required, I found myself responding to the possibilities and relationships already present within the palette.
Hand-mixed colours from Palette 23
The resulting paintings are not illustrations of April, nor are they attempts to reproduce the colours exactly as they appear in the plant subject. Instead, they are conversations between observation and a set of colours chosen by someone else.
Palette 23 study
What interests me most is where this process might lead. These first studies feel like the beginning of an investigation rather than a conclusion.
Over time, I'd like to develop a series of palettes drawn not from a book, but from the place where I live and work. The black poplars along the river, the changing meadows, the gold of early leaves, the whites of blossom and the subtle shifts that mark one part of the season from another.
For now, Palette 23 seemed like a good place to begin.
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