Whats the Point? Back to the Basics

For all of you saying "What's the Point?" this release is dedicated to you. The point is, you are not seeing what you think you are seeing. Your eyes are constantly adjusting to the context around them.

In the image at left, the two swatches are the exact same color. Now that I have told you that, you can see that. You probably even predicted there was some trick to this and guessed that the two swatches were the same shade of gray.

Let go of your pretense. When you let your eyes see on their own, the two swatches look different even though they are the exact same shade of gray.

They look different because of the background color around them. We accommodate with our eyes. If we see a dark background, we make the lighter spot brighter, appearing lighter than it actually is. And just the same, on a light backround, the same gray appears darker than it actually is.

These excercises are not answers, these are tools to help you train your eyes. As you move your mouse along the array on the left of ten shades of gray, the background matches the swatch you choose. As well, the whole in the middle of the upright rectangles also matches the swatch you chose and thus the background.

Our perception of color is adjusting constantly.

Color is relative, "(Yellow to) Blue Poles" pre-release

When you click on a bar from the color array, the background of the webpage will match the color of the bar you chose.

There are sixteen steps of poles. The background of the page entirely affects our perception of the color of each pole. Sometimes, a yellow pole looks as if it is glowing in blue.

I originally created ten poles with yellow on the left and blue on the right. The blue is a combination of Cyan and Magenta. The Blue and Yellow that I chose are actually complements.

My roommate Tessa asked me tonight, "Where is the green if it's mixing blue and yellow?"

If we had been mixing Cyan and Yellow, we would have gotten Green. As it is, we are toning. As we move from parents who are complements, the children gray.

When I made the ten poles and checked to see how the colors would appear on the web (primed for 256 colors) , the hexadecimal code was all mumbo jumbo.

I wanted clean language. I wanted a progression of color steps that matched on the web as I was seeing in Adobe Illustrator.

I made 16 poles, so that it matched the number of poles within the scheme of the binary color scheme. The progression is hexadecimal codes.

It's beautiful how it counts down on the left four digits and counts up on the right two digits: #FFFF00, #EEEE11, #DDDD22, #CCCC33, #BBBB44, #AAAA55, #999966, #888877, #777788, #666699, #5555AA, #4444BB, #3333CC, #2222DD, #1111EE, #0000FF

If you click on one of the blue poles on the far right-- say the third from the right, yellow suddenly seems to extend all the way across. And the same is true on the opposite side. If you choose the bar just two or three steps in from the left, from true blue, all of the bars to the left will appear yellow. And those to the right will appear blue.

Halation Horizons in the NY Times for Obama

In this article, the writer is juxtaposing Obama's journey to the classic American outsider icon. I was amazed to see the background of the image contain the straight horizontal lines I've been obsessed with from Dick's homework assignment.

In the class, we took the colors from a matrix (groups of families of color based on four chosen outside corners) and put those colors down as straight horizontal lines. (see my many posts of halation horizons)

I am very curious if this piece was created using a matrix of colors...

Happy Birthday Dad: Plum Halation

[the definitive page for halation has moved]

I was thinking my dad would like this set of colors, no idea why, but it's his birthday. Hey, Happy Birthday Dad.

When you move your mouse over the individual swatches, the background of the webpage changes to that color. As you move the mouse around to each swatch, you can see halations in the swatches.

The colors seem to change in the matrix as the background changes. The lower set of four boxes, is the same swatch set as the middle of the matrix above.

I had been curious how the middle boxes within the matrixes would respond without their parents surrounding them and keeping them separate from the background. Mostly, they serve as matching swatches to watch how different they look than the same swatches above as the background changes.

The Plum page is dedicated to my dad. He was born in 1939. Happy Birthday and may all your dreams come true!

ColorIsRelative.com launched

Color is Relative is a website dedicated to showing luminosity achieved through simple color combinations. On the site, the image at left is interactive. By moving the mouse over a single swatch the background color of the page will change to the same color. The effect is intended to show the impact of changing the context of color.

In the next month, I will be releasing my next series of paintings that will be based on the color theory I have learned from Dick Nelson.

You can also visit my color page on facebook. Seeing Things, Color is Relative.

The grid seems to change color as you move the mouse over each swatch. Take your time.

This is the alpha version, please let me know your reaction and make comments.

New Halation Horizons

The Old House in San Francisco circa 2001

This is the view overlooking my house in San Francisco from 1996-2001 with tons of my art hanging outside on the walls.

I remember thinking I should have painted something for the roof, but in reality, I had nothing that big to put up there. That took 'til moving to Oakland when I moved into the breathingSpace and made Claming Space from the 2003 gallery.

Much Love and Repect Hillary T-Shirts

Everybody kept talking about it. Hillary has to stop. Why is she still running? Come on girl, give it up.

I've been a big Obama supporter since I read his first book after seeing him at the Democratic Convention.

The reason I have always been into politics is because of my Mom. I still remember the night Carter lost to Reagan in 1980 because my Mom's birthday party was on election day that year.

The line was electric a year ago when I told her the depth of my support for Barack Obama.

She explained her support of Hillary as this:
Her entire Modus Operandi in politics has been about supporting the equality of women.
Hillary is so much the fruition of so many woman over so many years.

Any Obama lovers who want to hate on Hillary, aren't really getting the message.
I for one am proud that she played hard as long as she could. She played til the end.

Some will say she played a dirty game, I say she played well.

Much love and respect Hillary. Thanks for playing hard.
Thanks for representing.

In honor of my Moms... I made some thank you Hillary, much love and respect T-shirts.
Check 'em out.

Color is relative: video: halation explained

The Painting "Pascal"

All this time, I thought he was "Pascal". With an "S", not Pacal. I was wrong.

I named this painting after the Mayan emperor Pacal whose tomb inscription read to me like layers in my artwork. Turns out, somewhere along the line, I dropped in an "S".

When Eric and Andy got the painting "Pascal" they asked if I would send them a little something about the piece; an artist's interpretation, or comment on the work.

Now that they have returned from a year trip around the world, and are about to have a baby, ahem.... yes it has been years, I thought it might be time to finally deliver the goods.

The first thing to report is that the painting was meant to be called Pacal. Now that it's been years, I suppose the purple figure with his arms outstretched (who's namesake is the painting) will continue to be called "Pascal", as will the painting:
************The Painting Pascal******************

The painting Pascal was one of the first I did using the concept of pouring plastic resins, most commonly used for making sculpture, onto canvases into shapes outlined by caulking. The technique of using caulking to shape an image in plastic on canvas, to my knowledge, is still original.

The first layers of Pascal were lots of my own glyphs done in pen. Each layer of the painting is building up to the creation of Pascal, the figure. Each layer of abstraction is "striving for identity of self" as we all are when we are in the process of attaining consciousness.

Pascal is on a journey; a journey into new worlds of the unexpected where he will encounter new beings and new experiences. Some will challenge him and he will grow, others will validate his passion for his existence.

In the painting, his full sense of intuition, seems to extend out like a cone from his third eye. His intuitive center is clear and beaming. That lighter shade of purple inside his head that looks like a reflection is made of pearlescent pigment powder that I sprinkled onto the plastic resin as it was drying. The pearlescent powder extends down his spinal column. At his root chakra, again we find clarity and light.

The figure's arms are outstretched, almost as if he is using his hands to control his direction. With eyes wide open to experience, and with a firm sense of being held by fate, Pascal has his hands on the controls of his choices. He is going to other worlds, other paradigms of existence where his intuition, root and power of choice will guide him.

My intention with this painting was to represent and honor the Mayan Emperor Pacal's powerful disposition towards his actively changing reality.
******************

And now that it's been years and Eric and Andy have returned and are embarking on a new journey. Transformation abounds.

Blessings to new life.

Gorillas and Halation

Pacal: The Mayan Emperor

I came came to grips with the image of Pacal's tomb when I arrived at my guesthouse on my stay at Tikal in Guatemala. The rooms were white clay pods and an American Vietnam veteran lived in the back spending his nights staring out through his telescope at the stars. Someone had drawn with a black pen, a perfect representation of Pacal's tomb on to the white clay wall of the pod I slept in.

As I fell asleep I would see the outline of Emperor Pacal, reclining but with his head forward, moving his arms, surrounded by magical forms and dancing symbology.

Tikal is one of the greatest jungle-pyramid worlds that one can visit. While I prefer the vastness of Angkor Wat, I was enraptured by the detail of information and glyphs that depicted the Mayan's deep understanding of life, science, and spirituality. Mayan astrology is interpretted here.

Pacal's tomb was discovered in Palenque (in Chiapas, Mexico) in 1952. The Emperor Pacal died on August 31, AD 683 at eighty years of age after ruling for 63 years. detail picture of Pacal's Tomb

Interpretations of what the figure of Pacal on his tomb meant have been helpful, for instance:

• In the Maya dialects, "bone" and "seed" are synonymous.
• The bone piercing Pacal's nose as the symbol of rebirth.
• The object depicted above Pacal is the Tree of Life from which he is said to be falling.

However, he is not falling.

He is no more moving than the universe around him is. The object below him that gets interpreted as the setting sun is escorting him. He embraces his fate. His arms navigate the changing complexity of his surroundings.

Falling asleep with the glyph of Pacal painted on the wall, I found the that the inscription on his tomb was not so much about death, but about the process of transformation, any transformation.

Softness into the Distance

Halation 2

Olive Wine

definition of halation

Halation 3

definition of halation

Halation 4

The same color matrix.

definition of halation

Halation 5

definition of halation

Halation 6

definition of halation

Color Magic: How many colors do you see?

I just completed Dick Nelson's color class and have had my sensibilities of color completely deconstructed. Nelson was a founder of Art Maui 30 years ago and is a former student of Josef Albers.

Try this exercise:
[embed code]

This is a natural phenomenon of our eyes. The background, or context of a color, affects how we see it. What the evolutionary traits of this are, I have no idea, but we've learned in the class how a painter can use these phenomenon to create luminosity-- vibrancy among colors.

The homework in the previous exercise was to make 4 different colors look as if there were only 3. The effect is not based on any tricks, if anything it is simply the illusion created by the natural state of our eyes. Our eyes are constantly adjusting not just to the light in a room but as well to the variance of color.

Impressionist painters used a similar effect in their work.





These insights on color have profoundly affected my own work.

Halation

Meet two colors, we'll call them the parents.
On the left, Purple, on the right, Blue.



By mixing each color equally, we achieve the middle child.


By adding the middle child and creating an array you will see halation.

The middle color seems to vibrate a little. If you look longer, you will note that the middle swatch of color has a little of the purple on the right and a little blue on the left.

Here's a full array of different colors with equal steps of 5 children.





How do solid colors start to look a little 3 dimensional?
Where does this gradient come from?

The effect is counterintuitive. Each of the seven rectangles above contains a unique and solid block of color. Each square is a single color and yet each appears not to be.

It's beautiful.

The colors begin to vibrate beyond their individual recognition. They suddenly know about eachother and they become luminous.

This is called halation.

Halation, as an artistic term, is the spontaneous effect of the eyes spreading color beyond it's actual realm.

When you start to see the individual color swatches as gradients, you are seeing halation. It's a phenomenon of our eyes to find a vibrancy in specific placements of colors. In the examples above, the placement of each swatch was based on equal steps to parents. Halation also occurs between equal steps between hues of equal value

definition of halation