COVID Colour Challenge 2020

Sureness, Brightness, and Depth

Background

This is a strange time.

It feels like the world has suddenly paused and started to notice small things. So small that our eyes do not see them… but we are now aware that something can exist but be unseen.

As a painter, I am interested in understanding how the macroscopic wet material that I see and feel oozing out of a tube is also a hidden microscopic world of molecules. With so many coloured pigments available today for the artist’s palette, each coloured particle’s inherent qualities may appear similar. Still, their differences can be so subtle that they are undetectable to our senses. Observing pigments in a wet state (watercolour) makes differences in sureness, brightness, and depth visible. Still, the potential for each coloured pigment becomes more evident when their behaviours are heightened by applying them to a paper surface and watching them dry.

My PhD research plan for 2020 was to travel in May to Greece for an observational installation at my grandmother’s ancestral island of Chios and then travel to London for a studio residency at Colart International’s Innovation and Development Labs in June. I would have access to and revisit George Field’s notebooks in the extraordinary Winsor & Newton archive. I also planned to meet with a senior research scientist and author of Red: The Art and Science Of A Colour, Spike Bucklow, at Cambridge’s fabulous Hamilton Kerr Institute. The final writing of my thesis would rely heavily on time abroad.

And then the COVID-19 virus infected these plans.

With only a few days’ notice, I quickly moved my research work from UNSW Art & Design and set up a space at home that was more conducive to a practice-based researcher. I then went through a crazed hyper-vigilant COVID cleaning regime at home. It was a mixture of fear and uncertainty for my husband, who continues his battle with blood cancer, and grief for losing freedom and experiences in faraway places. As with any time of uncertainty that I have experienced in my life, I looked to my art practice to find the balance. Life is reflected in art and reflecting life. I examined tiny particles in red pigments and connected the inorganic to the organic. Each of my observations of red pigments is a study of life – its flesh and blood.

These new circumstances brought disappointment. Physically, my macroscopic journey across the globe was replaced with microscopic endeavours in isolation at my Sydney-based studio. I decided to set myself a challenge… a documentation project that would take place during the specific period of my COVID isolation at home. I'm interested in the nineteenth century English colourmaker George Field’s descriptive observations about the beauty of each colour pigment. His experiences, physical interactions and critical observations, provide an emotive personal connection with the materiality of colour. But I also wanted this project to tie my interest in the writings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the relations of knowledge with a systematic and unified explanation. In the spirit of Aristotle, the ‘COVID Colour Challenge’ 2020 (CCC2020) was not merely about observing and recording but, above all, explaining the Beauty of Colour.

During this project, I learned of each enacted observation’s beauty and behavioural nuances conducted exclusively with the red pigments. In Theory Of Colours, Goethe said: “Every pigment has its own peculiar nature as regards to its effect on the eye; besides this, it has its peculiar quality, that requires a corresponding technical method in its application.” Each observation demonstrated that the process of painting with material colours is a progressive experience, not a final or complete state. It is in a constant state of flux, and the artist must perform with these peculiar qualities.

The CCC2020 expanded my understanding of Field’s ‘Beauty of Colour’ and allowed me to distinguish subtle variances between each red pigment. By creating a structured procedure, I could review the echoed actions of pigment as it was laid on the paper. This procedure of observing built connections for me and acknowledged the serendipity, unpredictability, and beauty of artists’ colours.

My observations and explanations of the red pigments respond to George Field's observations. I have studied his various notebooks and investigated his guidance. I examined contemporary red pigments in my observational studies using Field’s ‘inherent qualities of good pigment.’ These qualities are: ‘beauty of colour, body, transparency and opacity, working well, keeping their place, and durability’ (Field, Chromatics, Or, An Essay on the Analogy and Harmony of Colours., 1817). He further specified the ‘beauty of colour’ as its sureness, brightness and depth. My observations reveal the connections between the scientist and the artist to build a language that describes the materiality of colour. I adopted the language used by George Field and his influences, including philosophers like Aristotle and Goethe and re-characterised the language that describes colour today.

My difficult challenge has been understanding how Field observed or measured each of these inherent qualities. How did he establish sureness? How did he see brightness? And when he talks of depth, is it in relationship to black and white (in terms of tones, dark and light) or is he talking about the intensity of the colour? These are things that I want to explore further.

Sureness (within Field’s definition of ‘beauty of colour’) is one of the descriptions of the qualities of pigments. Field says that for colours to possess sureness, they need the condition of being without doubt. Sureness is about assured certainty, confidence, conviction, positiveness, free from doubt and reliability. Each of my observations takes note of a colour’s ‘sureness’, its reliability and how artists may work and handle it without doubt.

Another aspect of Field’s ‘beauty of colour’ is brightness. This is seen as the quality or state of giving out brilliance and reflecting light. It is the quality of being vivid and boldly coloured. It became evident whilst conducting the CCC2020 that some colours reflect more light, while others seem to sit back and recede. I see brightness as advancing. It is also well worth considering that these observational studies are executed in watercolour. The pigments are not as affected by the vehicle in which the paint is applied. The CCC2020 was conducted using a warm, natural white paper surface for consistency in judging brightness. I used Arches paper 300gsm torchon (rough) on a block for all observations. There is extreme dependability between each sheet (in fact, I can't tell the difference between one pad to the other). Despite Arches paper being a naturally sized paper and more prone to some physical inconsistencies, there is a particular feel to this paper surface that permits me to see the effect of the pigment’s brightness and the dramatic colour changes from wet to dry state.

The last aspect of ‘beauty of colour’ is depth. Field addresses this as a quality of intensity or extremes. This would be the distance from the top of the surface to the bottom. I've explored ‘depth’ in many different ways in my observations. Sometimes it's been in its wet state, to see how colour behaves when it is allowed to settle in the glass tubes (as evident in GGLCOs). This demonstrates that pigments have weight and are affected by gravity. The pigments’ movement from the top of the cylinder to the bottom allows me to see how deep colour can become, which means the pigment has been dispersed quite a bit. In the observations during the CCC2020, depth can also be the extreme between the very lightest or diluted form of the colour to the heaviest application and saturation of the colour to reach its absolute maximum density.

The intensity and depth within a colour may be represented in either the wet or dry state. I found it easier to compare each square of red pigment when it had dried on the paper surface. Depth of a pigment can play a significant role when handling colour, and this particular challenge lent itself to examining that. For example, suppose I was to look at Burnt Sienna. In its deepest saturation, achieved with many multiples of layers of pigment (sometimes up to 15), the colour achieves a density of darkness, almost black. It would seem like a very warm black on the surface if I kept going. If I look at the other end of that spectrum, where the Burnt Sienna is diluted down to just tiny amounts of pigment particles, we see a soft subtle version of the pigment that is characterised more like lemon. A considerable extreme could be worked with as a painter, which is quite characteristic of highly translucent colours, including Burnt Sienna. Field referred to this duality as ‘latent colour’, a pigment that can possess two colours in one. In Field’s time, the artists marvelled at such colours, but on a contemporary palette full of quinacridones, phthalocyanines and perylenes, artists with inexperience struggle to explore the colours possibilities.

In The Outward Mind (Morgan, 2018), Morgan reviews the psychologies of beauty. Morgan describes Field’s work and how it intersects with many questions framed in British imperialist and psychological traditions of accounting for judgement of taste. Field often aspires to describe structures that exist in things themselves rather than as a mental experience, including the materiality and beauty of colour. One of the challenges I have faced when examining red pigments is describing Field’s idea of beauty without seeing beauty as a positive quality or a question about taste.

An example of this is when I conduct an observational study of the quality and behaviour in colour. This behaviour can be interpreted as either negative or positive, and thus, this question of judgement would affect my determination as if this colour held beauty or not. I’ve found that each colour behaves, interacts, and performs differently according to the surface and the conditions in which it is placed. The CCC2020 was an inadvertent project that provided a designated time and focused on building a working knowledge of the subtle tactile and visual differences between red pigments.

Scope

The questions I asked myself before this starting this challenge were: Can I acquire knowledge about material colours? How can I come to know it? And can I explain the inherent qualities of the beauty of colour... to see and feel it?

Materials

• 25 x Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours identified as Pigment Red. (See table of pigments in GGLCO#7)

• 25 x glass dishes

• 25 x glass jars

• 25 x paper towels for blotting excess water

• 2 x 25 sheets (11x 14cm) 300gsm Arches watercolour block

• 1 x Series 7 watercolour brush size 7.

Procedure

1. Using an Arches 300 gsm watercolour block, draw a grid of 3cm x 3cm squares on the page. See samples below. Use two or three blocks so that more than one pigment can be observed at a time whilst drying. Each pigment is done one at a time, as the page cannot be removed until the sample study is completed. Working on a block, avoid paper cockling when applying multiple layers.

2. Using your brush, add a small amount of water to your watercolour red pigment on the palette.

3. Apply gently to one of your squares. See the video link below for a demonstration.

4. Observe the pigment that has just been painted on the square closely. Note any changes as it evaporates. Allow drying completely before applying another layer.

5. Assess the strength of the pigment, then paint the next square and see if you can make it lighter or darker than the previous one by adding more water or applying more layers.

6. Repeat this process until you have filled all squares and achieved a tonal scale of very light to the most saturated colour of each pigment.

Note: If you paint a square too close to another before it has dried, they will bleed into each other. Watercolour requires you to take time. I try to notice the small changes that occur in each colour.

Observations and Reflections

The following comments were transcribed from my immediate assessment voice recordings after each coloured pigment observation. This study occurred in March 2020 at my home studio in Port Hacking with my family during the lockdown.

• Advancing Reds

• Receding Reds

• Earth Reds

COVID Colour Challenge 2020 by Natalie O’Connor: The Beauty of Redness