What color is your dir·i·gi·ble?

Early Night Window

Bowl of Fruit I painted this for a wife many years ago.

Small sweet peppers and fresh guacamole

Remember yesterday's animal reports? These pieces I made for my father as a child. I assume one is a strange turtle and the other an ashtray. My Dad was a big smoker.

At least I do not have to rely on my memory. Turn these items over and the signature of the "artist" is clearly visible.

Bougainvillea nearby.


Color, color, color. I remain obsessed with color. My unprofessional photos, my poorly executed watercolors, my dreams all occur in color.

Lately, I've been experiencing vivid dreams, many of them sexual. Don't ask me why, but it may be related to a certain aspect mostly lacking in my life circa 2007. My potential lovers appear not in black and white but in color. And they are naked. Woo Hoo! Waking up from them is never much fun.

I remember various girls I've been attracted to. One said, as I was lamely trying to seduce her, "I'm all yellow and black." (I didn't succeed, naturally, but I appreciated her self-knowledge.)

One of the common writing lessons I've used in various classes is to choose a color, and then ask students to write whatever comes to their minds, quickly. It's a ten-minute exercise.

Females of most cultures tend to write about passionate love, romance, deep emotional connections...Most males, by contrast also react by writing about passion, but it can tend to involve violence, blood, and danger.

Please forgive this old writing teacher for my gross generalizations. My sample size (several hundred students aged late teens to early 90s) is definitely not large enough to be statistically valid.

Pronounce other colors and you get different responses: Think about it.

Blue.

Green.

Yellow.

Black.

Brown.

Orange.

Pink.

Lavender.

White.

I could go on, but you get the idea. All of us conjure many latent associations that immediately come to mind when you speak those color-words.

There are many other trigger exercises when you teach writing, but I've not found any set of terms that rivals colors for the depth of response exhibited by my students.

One other thing -- I've never administered this "test" without getting a surprise. My Chinese students, for example, react to red in a way that seems unique to their cultural background.

***

I have been lucky enough to have spent a fair amount of time grazing through European museums over the years, and that is where I discovered my love of a certain shade of black. Not any artist's black -- Rembrandt’s black. Funny, when I got the chance to research his life, that his blackest period, if I may put it that way, appears to have been when he was young. Later paintings moved subtlety away from black, as far as I could see.

Two of my favorites, republished below, are from his "early period" -- "Philosopher in Meditation" (1632), and "A Scholar" (1631), both gloriously dependent on blackness.



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