Category Archives: Color

Where Have You Been?

“Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest”. – Georgia O’Keeffe

In conjunction with my current exhibition COLOR|stories, I gave a talk last weekend about my work and process. One of the things I touched upon is how the many places my husband and I have lived have influenced my work, leaving an impression through color, composition, and subject.

With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to take a quick tour of the locales we’ve called home via representative examples that have resulted from a sense of each place.

Maine: Having grown up on the coast of Maine, the Atlantic ocean is deeply imprinted: the smell of salt air, the varying blue/grey/green, the sound of the waves…

Washington State: Recurrent visits to Pike Place Market resulted in many fish drawings and paintings.

Virginia: Most of the 10 months we lived in Virginia were so hot and humid that it seemed I barely ventured out of the air-conditioning. I made a series of clothes hanger drawings that year that were the direct result of so much time spent indoors.

San Francisco: I can’t remember if this piece was inspired by the quilt I was making for our expected first baby – or the other way around. But it was at this time that I realized that pastel dust and pregnancy didn’t mix and I was going to have to find another way to make art.

Hawaii: Sitting on a Hawaiian beach, how could one not be inspired by the expanse of sky and fluffy clouds stretching out forever over the clear, turquoise water?

Washington State, again: We were so happy to go back to Washington. The colors of the evergreens, Mount Rainier in the distance, and even the rain were all aspects we loved.

Pennsylvania: While living in PA, I saw the Delaware River daily. Watching as it reflected varying qualities of light was a large part of its charm.

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Vermont: There is so much to love about Vermont. The seasons have such a huge impact on us here and add so much depth to the routine of the everyday. Fall’s mantel of russet and gold, covering unmown fields, is a showstopper.

While each locale may not be immediately apparent in these works without knowing the back story, when seen in this context I feel that these pieces, as a group, create something of a road map of our semi-nomadic life.

It’s a worthwhile exercise to think about how the places in your life have affected your thought process and resulting work, don’t you think? We can’t help but be a product of where we’ve been.

February’s Self-Restraint

Last week I began the first stages of a couple of smaller pieces, looking forward to the learning curve that seems to come more rapidly when working in series and the pieces aren’t (hopefully) as time consuming to complete.

Dye and Paint on Silk, detail ©Elizabeth Fram

Winter Palette

I have been thinking about ice and snow – big surprise! – and the gentle depth of tones to be found in each. I love the pared down beauty at this time of year and watching for the subtle changes of color that take place in the landscape.

The winds were fierce on our hill earlier this week, leaving behind sculpted piles of snow that remind me of Isamu Noguchi’s work. The rounded forms seem proudly self-possessed, nestled comfortably within their environment. They have carved edges that are clearly defined but smooth enough to convey very subtle value changes. The effect is lovely.

So — how do I transcribe this idea surrounding winter’s visual restraint without being literal? These studies will not be landscapes, but I hope that they will tell part of that greater story. My thoughts revolve around the dissection of the landscape into basic elements; a process of subtraction that distills an image into its essence, with the idea of evoking memory and mood rather than portraying an actual place.

Dye and Paint on Silk, detail ©Elizabeth Fram

I recently came across this quote by painter Gerhard Richter which seems to cut to the core of the way I think about existing within my surroundings and the search for a way to express the emotional connection that results.

“Our connectedness to nature and our wish to commemorate life and our place in the universe compels us to describe our physical surroundings and, in doing so, ourselves. Landscape’s compositional and spiritual cues also contain the vital seeds of abstraction and beyond.”

Here’s to the hope that these seeds can be planted and will take root despite our frigid temps.

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And to continue with the idea of subtlety and understatement: let me share with you the beautiful photographs of Scott Peterman – a master of the restrained palette. Don’t miss this slideshow of his photographs of ice houses!

The School of Color (where homework isn’t a dirty word)

Color is like gravity: an inescapable and powerful force that pulls you in and won’t let go. When deftly handled it’s hypnotic. Working with it is an oh-so-sweet challenge that requires lots of time and practice.

In an effort to learn more, I keep index cards with scraps of different fabrics glued to them and sketchbooks filled with reference material. Both highlight unexpected color combinations that I find particularly beautiful or intriguing. I return to these sources over and over — for ideas or even as a sort of visual vacation when I need a break.

In my latest work I’ve been combining processes that are inherently different, but which complement each other and lay the groundwork for chromatic lessons.

The first step is to dye raw silk after painstakingly covering it with running stitches and then gathering them so that the dye can only access certain parts of the whole. Some areas, such as the figures below, are left unstitched, so the different colors of dye are allowed to fill those sections freely. Overall, this creates a textural pattern that serves as a base. Next, textile paint is applied relatively quickly; broad strokes of pigment that bleed into the fabric and mix impulsively.

Then those base layers of color are covered with stitches of many different hues, playing off the coloration of the dye and paint. The density of the stitching provides a way to learn through the push and pull between the colors as they react to each other. Each stitch/mark is similar to the dots from a pointillist’s brush, providing a means of examining the nuances of how one hue affects the next, with the result that I’m able to expand my understanding of color theory while exploring its intellectual and emotional power.

The slow and methodical pace of the process gives me an opportunity to resolutely consider each mark and I often go back to pull out stitches/colors that don’t seem to have been placed correctly. There is definitely an intuitive element which kicks in that has evolved with practice. It comes from watching closely as the work develops and from seeing how the colors affect not just each other, but the artwork as a whole.

Color is a school with no mandatory prerequisites that’s open to all of us. As you move through your day, keep your eyes peeled for what grabs you; the combinations that make you pause. The beauty of the process is you can write your own curriculum.

If you’re interested in adding to your syllabus, here are a few suggestions. There’s some really good meat to their texts, but it’s also fun to just flip through the pictures.

Color in Contemporary Painting; Integrating Practice and Theory by Charles LeClair Painting What You Want to See by Charles Reid Glorious Color by Kaffe Fassett
Susan Sargent’s The Comfort of Color