My Drug of Choice #paint52

I knew I love color, but I just realized I’m and addict. I’m a color junkie. Color is my drug of choice. Honestly, I have been expressing how much I love color and that is what my paintings are about, but didn’t realize how much or the depth of truth in which I said it. Especially, now that I have been painting consecutively, due to my paint52 challenge, it has become more apparent.

In my early years of painting, in my teacher George de Groat’s class, I noticed a woman painting across from me, using a bright pink, pinker than any pink that I have experienced. I had to ask her where she got it. She mentioned it was permanent rose, by Shiva Signature Oils. I ended up purchasing it and found it to be intense and highly saturated and of course wonderful. It was the beginning of my drug habit.

Wolf Kahn said he has a person make his pastels. He wanted a special blue and what he told her was “I want a blue, bluer than any blue you have seen before”. He did get his wish. That’s what I want. I want to use and have color combinations that most people have never seen before. I want the viewer to be taken on a color trip.

Wolf Kahn~Color and Consequence

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/25903931[/vimeo]

I have found in my search for colors that certain brands are better than others for certain colors. You can’t beat Daniel Smith for their Indian Yellow, Phthalo Turquoise and Quinacridone pigments. Do you have a favorite color? Does it have to be a particular brand?

You know it kind of reminds of that line from English Patient, when Almasy says “It is a very plum plum.” Color can take you to that place, that extra hyper sense of actually being able to taste, hear, smell, or feel its temperature. It can take you to another world, my hallucinatory world of Technicolor.