featuring red and green together. "Those colours fight and they
don't work, and all you'll get is an eye popping mess," our teachers
said. But just down the hall in another studio class we were asked
to, "please create a series of paintings using just red and green. Those
colours create exciting examples of colour pop and will give you
dynamic artwork you'll treasure forever."
As students newly out of high school where all of the rules
were rigid (I was 16 when I started art college) we quickly
became consumed with humour and guilt knowing that
either someone was pulling our legs, or that both aesthetic
appraisals of these powerful Christmas colours were right,
or wrong, or....we should make our own rules. The more
chemically experimental among us discovered that this
combination of colours was even more exciting if enhanced
by a party atmosphere.
When I come across a drawing in red, or red and green
I remember that for a few years after I dropped out of art
college early, I did quite a few red and green drawings and
paintings. I still use bright colours, but I'd forgotten my art
school quandary until I found this drawing that I like of my
friend Lyn Green tonight, and wondered for a minute why
I'd drawn her in red.
Sketchbook drawing of Lyn Green
red marker on bond paper
go to school and contradict what another teacher has
taught my students the day before, even if we're all
trying to teach "from the same page."
Have an it's-fun-to-be-aesthetically-defiant day.
