seeing purple

in process photo of The Straw

There's a reason why bits of surprising color shows through in my paintings.  When I'm first searching for the forms and the relationships between them, I use color - and not necessarily the color that I see in real life.  The first colors I chose either represent my interest in that part of the painting or are helping me to organize the painting spatially.  Certain colors suggest distance while others seem to jump forward.  Reds are apt to attract a lot of attention while subdued grays provide a resting place for the eyes. 

The Straw was a challenge because the subject of the painting, the straw, needed to appear in front of the Post-it Note.  To calm the yellow, I added a fair amount of white and also used a less-saturated yellow ochre.  There are other ways of pushing the note back - and if you look, I think you can see those too.