Vancouver, B.C. Canada

Color as a System: The Cybernetics of the Limited Palette

The visible color spectrum can be joined at either end into a circle because of the mysterious happenstance of violet yielding magenta when intermixed with red. The resulting circle, or "color wheel" can be sectioned and divided according to various strategies that produce harmonies and balancing acts. There are complements, triads, primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The "color wheel" can also be extended into three dimensions in figures variously known as the color solid, color sphere, and other things. In the art of painting, the colors in such figures demonstrate chromatic ideals that can be more or less approximated with quarried pigments, manufactured pigments and dyes. The discrepancies between the ideals of the imaginary "color wheel" and actual pigments and dyes, along with strategies of harmony and balance, make unforeseen color "situations" possible in painting. The sum of original colors used by a painter is a palette. There are "earth palettes", "chromatic palettes", "expanded palettes", and "limited palettes." What does each palette do? Moreover, what does each palette mean? Who are these colors? This is business for cybernetic investigation. Depending on the palette, colors take on disguises, perform alchemy, communicate, make space, remove space, suggest glory, tell stories, lie, cheat, lecture, and make mistakes. This is a look into historic palettes, real and imaginary, from Caravaggio to Seurat, Picasso to Vermeer, the Roman Emperors to the people in the caves, to deKooning and Jasper Johns. It is also a look at several invented palettes in my work, a look at what they do and what they mean.