Feeling in the Moment

lightDark As I complete a series of Robert Mondavi Winery’s To Kalon Vineyard, I'm asked what is my subject?  It is simply a moment of color and my feeling in that moment. Hence my tag line, “Savor the colors of the moment.” But what is color really?  Scientifically, color is light vibrating on different frequencies.  The Impressionists observed that color, or light, changes each moment as the sun moves over the sky. The Impressionists also knew that color is shaped by surfaces and surrounding reflections and absorptions of other color.  It’s a complex business and painter’s attempt to simplify this illusion on canvas. Back to the right brain, color is emotion.  So how is emotion expressed in color?  By blending it and smearing, painting, mushing it on the canvas with feeling behind it. People have asked how I know how to blend colors.  What percentage of red and blue do I mix to get purple? Like a chef, you measure your ingredients when you're starting out but then you just feel it. I respond to color intuitively.  That response is where the juice is, the depth of feeling. I don’t think it, I feel it. Before I complete a large-scale canvas like this 30” x40” of “Tearing Vines” of Robert Mondavi Winery’s To Kalon Vineyard for Dave and Cheryl Copham, I get the foundation down. The foundation is the light and dark, the range of contrasts.  I’ll use a warm neutral foundational color, Transparent Oxide Red. It’s at this stage that I delineate my light source, establish the shadows, and give the piece my emotional energy and that is my feeling in the moment.
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