On Color
Four artists talk about how they select color
If I could place a common thread between all the artists I selected for Charlotte Russell Contemporary, it would be artists who use color in unique and innovative ways. Color is what draws my eye in. Color is what gives me all the "feels." Color is what makes a work stand out. I asked four artists I love the same question:
"Let’s talk color - how do you decide your color choices?"
Here is how they responded.
Jean Gray Mohs
Color ebbs and flows for me. For a time, I was combining contrasting colors, colors that allowed for a bit of chaos and spontaneity. But now I find myself leaning into grouping of color. For my last exhibition I made 30 pieces, in this grouping there were 6 groups of 5 images. Each grouping had a thematic color that I felt investigated the personality of one person who has donated life, and each of the 5 images were meant to represent the life donated- a heart, lung, eye, liver, and so on.
So I can gather color choices from lots of places. Often it will speak to me in the moment or from a mood.
Maggie Perrin-Key
My color choice is very intuitive. Putting colors together is something I just love to do, and I feel like I know what colors I want to be next to each other. Specific colors have a personality and become characters; sometimes they want to be next to someone specific, or go to a color party with all their friends!
Kelly Sheppard Murray
Each arrangement invites a new opportunity to explore color and consider how color and form work together to communicate something. I am drawn to vibrant colors often but also feel a strong sensitivity to the way color conjures emotional qualities or associations. In the end it can often be a very intuitive process where instinct leads me but other times I will have a color combination in mind that I want to see how it looks together or what associations the given combination will bring up when I look at it.
Emily Bartolone
Color is the one thing that is (kind of) planned out ahead of time. I premix all my colors so that I have anywhere between 12–20 options in my studio at any given time. These aren’t in any certain palette, but a mix of colors I find exciting at the moment that interact with each other interestingly. I have a pack of Color Aid paper that I keep handy to help me explore colors as well. Then, as I’m working, I can simply pull colors out of my supply and see how they’d work on any given piece. Most of the paintings in this body of work were made from a similar batch of colors, however I don’t think you’d know this without looking closely because they all interact with each other in such different ways.