With Flying Colors!

Color!  What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
– Paul Gauguin

Color is amazing. We take it for granted because it’s all around us. It permeates our physical and emotional lives, even our language. We talk about a person’s colorful personality. We feel in the pink – or kind of blue. We associate memories and thoughts with certain hues. Because of its many emotional cues, color is a powerful communication tool and influences psychological reactions. People are attracted to colors that look good to them. Certain colors relieve stress, calm the brain and help the body relax. Yellow is perceived as a happy color, red is sensual, blue is serene, while darker, earthier tones are mellow and reflective. 

Summer approaches, and a virtual torrent of color washes away the monotones of winter.  Nature obliges with flowers in every color of the rainbow. What better time for Paradise City artists to step up and reveal their true colors when they celebrate this season’s Special Exhibition, “With Flying Colors!”

Color plays a pivotal role in all visual arts, whether in paint, clay, steel, stone, or cloth. The interplay of light and dark, bright and dull, colors from opposite sides of the wheel – these allow artists to express emotions, tell stories, explore landscapes and create new ones. We savor the richly distinctive hues of a handwoven jacket and revel in the beautifully colored scarves that adorn them. We search for the perfect gemstone that brings out the radiant color in someone’s eyes. Woodworkers often use accent colors to highlight shape and grain; a colorful table runner can even join with the rich hues of a maple or walnut surface to herald a meal fit for kings. Ceramic and glass vessels of all types, by their very nature, play with light and offer a virtual panoply of color. And of course there is painting; in the hands of an artist, the deft and inspired use of color practically tells a story all its own. 

Coco Chanel always said, “The best color in the world is the one that looks good on you.” But then, that’s a horse of a different color!

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way; things I had no words for.
– Georgia O’Keeffe