THE PRIMARY CHORD OR THE GORDIAN KNOT UNTIED

THE PRIMARY CHORD OR THE GORDIAN KNOT UNTIED

The most difficult color chord to work with is the primary triad of red, yellow and blue. They are the starting point in the mixing of other colors ( i.e. yellow + blue = green), but likewise they cannot be created from other colors. They don't particularly like each other so are difficult to place side by side, they each vary in chromatic intensity with yellow being the most dominate and blue least. red is very symbolic.

This chord was the starting point for the Hydrangeas Over the Amoskeag I introduced in week 2. Working with red, yellow and blue is like dealing with three chromatic divas so I needed a color that could settle this crowd down and that color is green.

This particular combination was one of the first 'scientific" color chords of the early Nineteenth  Century. It was also the first primary color chord. It was developed by none other than Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, the German poet, dramatist and Italophile who also liked to dabble in the new science of optics. A Phd. was not required then.

IS IT FINISHED?

Hydrangeas Over The Amoskeag

James Aponovich

oil on canvas, 34" x 55"

So, here I am and the long climb  is approaching the summit. The painting of ten thousand windows and a million leaves is slowing "coming together", but exactly when do I finally put the brushes down and consider it done?

I have said before that a painting is only finished when there is nothing more you can do to make it any better. true enough, for a painting is more than the sum of its parts. By parts I mean all the complex elements of color, line,energy, visual weight, balance of imagery, proportion of areas and a myriad of other things  that all need to rush to a conclusion, a finish. But should a artist cross the threshold and seek to extend the painting it becomes "overworked." The life quickly gets sucked out of it.

The artists responsibility is to recognize the point of conclusion and there remains only one more thing to do......sign it.

Hydrangeas Over the Amoskeag  ( detail)