This was an interview requested by an editor at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty Products in the Summer of 2019. They were working on promotional materials and wanted to connect with a painter using colour. It was used to feed into their research for their Eye Colour Magic campaign and was very enjoyable to do. Nice people and kind to send some gifts for my daughters, too!
Why are you particularly drawn to colour as an area of expertise?
Genetically speaking, I think I inherited a sense of colour from my mother who was a talented hairdresser with an amazing feel for colour. It was the late sixties and she had different colour hair every other week. There were unusual colour combinations around me at home too. I grew up in the old industrial town of Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales, a mile from the Beacons National Park. In my early days as an art student I used to paint the landscape, both urban and rural, both of which were very dramatic - a connection with the home I’d left, I suppose. Very slowly the subject lost interest for me and the actual colour began to take over as autonomous content. It seemed natural to then to move into abstraction, which seemed to offer more potential with regards to colour. For one thing there is an element of freedom, not having to tie colour down to a place, object or feature. I was fascinated by the surprises that colour creates on a canvas. I am not a socially confident person and usually struggle at private views or art parties. I do try to really go for it in my work, though: colour can be daunting, terrifying even. I get a real kick from trying to shock myself when I use it. It really gives you confidence, too, as a person. You have to temper such ambition with the patience needed for the craft of your discipline. Things don’t just happen overnight, and there’s a lot of paintings which end up looking like sludges; it’s about discipline and application. I try to learn from the past greats as much as I can, but you must challenge and question them, or we wouldn’t have much of a future.
What are your personal thoughts on colour as connected to emotion and psychology?
That’s such a huge question and I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to do the subtle complexities of it justice. I would only say that emotions and psychological states are usually nameable phenomena, whereas, for me, life itself transcends such thought patterns. Personally speaking, colour holds every meaning; it exemplifies life - being produced by light. I identify colour as a force rather than a decorative element when I’m painting but apprehend it differently in other facets of my life. I can appreciate how people are deeply moved by it in their lives, but ultimately it’s part of my work for me so I have a different take on it, in that sense; it’s all about context. Psychologically speaking, most people, I would say, still gravitate to the “dark colours are serious and bright ones are frivolous” mind set. Colour subjectivity is used in quite a rabidly stereotypical way with children - before the 1940s pink was for boys, blue (a more delicate colour) was for girls - whereas now it’s the opposite, with bells on. I’m all for breaking down these restrictive attitudes, though. In Britain we are notoriously suspicious of colour, bordering on a phobia at times. It’s seen as an eccentric quality in someone to wear bolder colours or as an unofficial uniform of the “creative type”. Things are changing though, and I’m sure the internet has played a huge role in enabling us to access lots of cultural cross-pollinations. I try to see it objectively. You could say, I don’t have a favourite colour. Colour as we see it, is less than one percent of the reality of our electro-magnetic spectrum...but it’s my favourite part!
Tell me a little more about your courses on colour theory at The Royal Academy. What are the goals of the classes? What skills do you aim to enhance through exploring the theory of colour?
My courses at the RA are practical based, usually with a twist to get people out of their comfort zone (I prefer the term “conceptual framework”). I find most publications, online resources and classes tend to focus on a “how to do” approach. I’m not knocking this for one minute, as it gives pleasure to countless people to learn a new skill or learn how to do something. My courses, though, are based on the premise of getting someone into a pickle and equipping them with the skill-set to get out of it. I introduce colour theory models and how they can be useful as a guide to help organise your palette and provide you with a wider set of options to consider. I encourage experiment and discovery. Learning about colour through this personal route is vital for expressiveness. You have to make the theory real and useful. I also work on technical strategies and how to control paint; getting people to feel comfortable modifying their work. I have found a good maxim is “keep it simple, do it well” though I also like to say “if it’s good, make it better, if it’s bad, make it worse” . There’s a lot of fun to be had with the latter. I try to keep people in good humour as I’ve found it can be emotionally draining to change one’s work, or lose a hard won colour combination. The ultimate goal is empowerment and to give people confidence. Colour will never let you down if you believe in it.
Are there any particular historical/artistic/psychological facts that come to mind in relation to the below colours?
GREEN
BLUE
COPPER/GOLD/ORANGE/YELLOW
PURPLE
How would you create contrast/harmony with the above colours? (individually)
I would preface this response with a caveat: in an abstract painting, any colour’s qualities can dramatically change due to its function within the overall logic of the painting. Renoir was reluctant to see Matisse as a good painter but became convinced he was one due to his ability to integrate black without disrupting the “picture plane” (as it inevitably did in a lesser artist’s work- creating perceptual “holes”). In fact one feature of Impressionism was the abandonment of black as it was not on Chevreul’s chromatic wheel- it was seen as a light taker. Matisse used black as a light giver and had integrated it perfectly in those specific paintings seen by Renoir. Black is called the absence of colour by some. Try telling that to Franz Hals, for example, or Ad Reinhardt. If there’s a pigment available, then it’s fair game to a: think of it as colour potential and b: deploy it expressively. This is the breaking point of theory by the way: any colour can work with any other colour dependent upon its context and functionality. My memory of individual colours/pigments is called upon every time I paint, however I often try to work against this experience; I try to contradict my knowledge to see what happens with any colour I’m using in a work. This is an example of what I mean by expanding one’s conceptual framework. Theory suggests, practice convinces.
Green is symbolically the colour of nature (it’s used now as a word meaning environmental). Anyone painting landscapes is usually stacking their palette with greens. Ironically, green was seldom used in landscape art until Constable came along and he became a game-changer. He was actually criticised for his use of it and asked “where are the golden mellow tones of a violin in your grasses?” Legend has it he took a violin out and placed it on the grass- “show me them now!” It’s a static colour (having both the recessive blue and advancing yellow - again here that “rule” can change due to circumstance). Green can thus be inert unless it’s handled with delicacy. This was probably why old masters eschewed it so much as it didn’t lend itself to atmospheres. It’s fine to look for inspiration in the world of flora to set up dialogues with green but colour contrasts seen in nature are often oversimplified by us into two colours (the accent against the dominant): a pink or a yellow for example - both the colour of a standard “pretty” flower. Look again at a flower though and you will see a world of soft half-tones. That’s where the true expressiveness of this “accent” to green lies. There are clues there in contrasting with green. Don’t just use one colour, explore one as its own initial accent but give it another sibling colour to support it. Also consider if the actual green is moving to blue or yellow in itself and this gives you the positioning on the wheel to work with or against it. Orange added takes greens to olives in beautiful ways and the sense of an earth emerges. Now you’re further away from the floral contrast and things start to become interesting.
What we know as Ultramarine Blue was a prized colour in ancient times and a favourite of Renaissance times when the expensive pigment Lapis Lazuli started being traded from Afghanistan. It was often used for the robes of the Virgin Mary, sparingly or extravagantly at times, as a display of wealth or power in patronage. The cheaper Smalt blue (a Cobalt Blue) often replaced it. Scientists have recently discovered some lapis in female tooth remains from medieval Germany pointing to the significant fact that women (as nuns) and not just men undertook biblical manuscript illumination. When using blues, I am very cautious as they can drift off into atmospheric effects and reveal themselves as readable “skies”- a figurative suggestion undermining the abstract nature of the painting. To counter this, I like to look at the temperatures of blue: setting warms and cools off against each other at times to keep a sense of tension and not let passivity in. I particularly look at this when the blues are tinted and light. A light blue is a real troublemaker for the reasons I’ve mentioned. A tiny smidge of black greys them a touch to anchor and fatten them when needed.
Copper has a rosiness to it’s warmth and when it oxidises turns to verdigris so you see there is a natural complement in its chemistry. That green contrast can be extrapolated out to blues and yellows to act in unison as a proxy green. Though I’d be curious to see lilac against it as it’s using the integral blue complement against the warmth and has a red to connect with the rosiness. This could be a bridging colour to another punchy contrasting hue.
Gold in gold leaf is often applied on red to give it warmth. Any metal pigments are dramatic so deep contrasts help them gain centre stage, however it can be intriguing to send them back into the chorus line and use them as a surprising nuance where mustards or other pinky earths would have been used. Their inherent sheens can provide a subtle but startling contrasts to softer colours around them. Having fun with colour like this is vital. Painting is a sort of serious play. You have to be unbiased and open in your decision-making; always switched on and responsive, like a good actor. I often paint colours onto scraps of paper and can hold them against other colours to test their dialogues (Just holding a piece of gold jewellery against fabric would do the trick).
The late American abstract artist Jules Olitski make some amazing uses of metallics. Most pigments are first developed by the car industry and then paint companies get hold of them. Golden artist colours in the US make incredible paints using top quality pigments. In the eighties they brought out a range of new metallics, micaceous paints, nacreous mother of pearl colours and what was known as “interference paints”; these latter ones are transparent pastels which flip between their complements when you move around them. They really pop on dark colours. Golden also made a huge range of transparent gels to alter the thickness of a paint without changing its colour. I have sometimes added a metallic or one of these other kinds of pigment into regular colours to turbo-charge them. These days I tend to look at simpler more direct pigments. Artists can use these gels to suspend colour and isolate layers to create “optical” mixes instead of physical ones. A bit like the glazes in a watercolour.
“Orange” is often cited as coming from the Spanish “naranja” - the word for the fruit tree (though it probably is much older than that). I have put it on soft lilacs, creams or bleached out blues and it glows in the most extraordinary way. It’s such an airy colour whereas red can smother things if you’re not careful, that’s why the Fauves loved vermillion (an orangey red) as it acted as a light-creating stepping stone to heavier crimsons. It got their reds breathing. I love burning an orange with a tiny amount of violet, it just singes it and a mid yellow washed against it can feel almost milky it as it connects with that internal cool violet.
Yellow too often appears as the lightest colour in paintings. I get people to look at its tonality and try to swap it with other light pastels or earths to expand the potential for spatiality. It is a difficult colour to use; primarily, not just because of its natural “eccentricity” but because so many full throttle yellows have an innate transparency. If I’m layering it over darker colours I under-paint a white or really light hue to allow it to maintain its freshness. The Chinese consider it the most prestigious of colours and it was used as the colour of the Emperor (the complete opposite to the western purple - also its direct opposite on the wheel). It can look hackneyed when in transition with green as it’s such a familiar harmony in nature. Earths are the forgotten natural accent in this relationship and add a subtle red contrast into the mix. My grandmother used to say “a three-legged stool finds its balance”.
An early purple was made in Roman times “Tyrian purple” called “porphura” from the Greek and took many thousands of crushed molluscs just to make small quantities of dye. This scarcity made it into a prized colour available only to Royalty or powerful people, accordingly, and was used to dye their clothes. It is a gainsaid maker of landscape atmosphere and adds an easy depth to colours. After the Impressionist’s usage of it, it has become a bit of a clichéd colour of shade. I often play it off a brown or switch it with one as it’s tonally similar and takes things from air to earth. When I was a student first making abstract paintings, I made a number of “block colour” paintings which were a series of six colours making a sort of visual chord. I still have a favourite painting from then when I used alternating purples and reds. I dropped a blued green into the sequence at the end to connect with the purples but contrast with the reds and it gave it a surprise element too.
Historically the Dutch have been real experts at the craft of making paint with artists working in guilds for up to seven years. They were curious about optics and pigment origin and as such had a real physical connection with their colour that you could say we have lost somewhat. I don’t like looking back in an overly sentimental way but we seem to be surrounded by indiscriminate colour and as a result are becoming increasingly desensitised to it. As Matisse said “an avalanche of colour has no force”. As more and more visual culture exists in the virtual domain, it's more important than ever to have a visceral connection with colour.
Can you tell me a little about the idea of light and colour? How colours change throughout the day for example?
Britain has a temperate climate, with a softer light. That’s why we enjoy neutral colours so much. Painters here are really good at handling greys. I like travelling to hotter climates when I can, as it energises my sense of colour when experiencing brighter light. Monet gravitated to more northerly France as he obviously loved atmospheric light. He made some remarkable studies of the changing of colour as the light altered the scene sequentially through the day. He’d work in series having numerous canvases on the go. In this way he’d end up with a half dozen or more variations of the same motif. The subject was constant: Rouen cathedral or a simple haystack in a field for example, but the results were startlingly different and complex. This is working with what’s called “local light” and his responses were jaw-dropping. Cézanne said of him “He’s only an eye, but what an eye!” Matisse deliberately moved to the Riviera to get away from the “fog of greys”. His colours became stronger and flattened up on the surface into crashing contrasts and jazzy juxtapositions. He is the gatekeeper for abstract colourists. His last paintings have an incredible phosphorescent glow to them. This was revolutionary for painters to see. For abstract painting, there became no need to look to simulate the effect of light as we see it in the landscape. Rather it’s through the interaction of different colours that the painting can generate its own internal “pictorial” light. This is easier said than done though; for one thing you must always guard against the colour suggesting a place or an atmosphere, if you want a pure abstract painting; things mustn’t “leak”. When colour creates a feeling of light rather than the effect of it, this resultant luminosity in turn creates space.
We are keen to explore the idea of the colour wheel: a tool all makeup artists are taught to work with when concealing imperfections in the skin, creating contrast with a particular eye colour or selecting undertones in pigment. What do you know about the history of the colour wheel? How has this evolved in modern artistry?
There have been numerous wheels. Isaac Newton invented the first one when looking at colour through prisms in the mid 1600s. Goethe created a six section symmetric wheel (think of an early model of the basic one used in schools); this was in the early nineteenth century. Around the same time Moses Harris showed in his “natural system of colour” how the three primaries (red, blue, yellow) could make the full chromatic range in a wheel. There’s a beautiful hand coloured book with this in the RA’s library. The most famous though is probably the French chemist Michel Chevreul’s really exquisitely graded wheel. I think he invented an early soap too! This had a profound effect on the Impressionists, post Impressionists and the Fauves from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth. For example: The Impressionists saw that by using purples and lilacs in the shadows cast by yellowed forms in sunlight, these shadows would glow rather than recess into the traditional darkened shade - purple being the complement of yellow on the wheel. This opened up colour spaces in paintings in quite unforeseen ways. The Fauves took this to more extreme levels setting highly saturated complements (especially reds and greens) against one another. As these are the most tonally similar opposites the results can be quite startling. Their work still excites my eyes over one hundred years after it was made. A modern painter who used such active contrasts was Patrick Heron. When such colour contrasts are this direct there is often an optical “buzz” called a “simultaneous contrast” (this was also discovered by Chevreul ). The eye cannot quite cope with the two conflicting wavelengths and flip-flops between the two in an instant. Pop artists picked up on this,too and made use of it in psychedelic patterns.
I would say skin tones are akin to a ground (or base colour) often employed by painters. These tones will strongly alter the effect of any top colour being applied. Colour is relational. You have to adjust it to its neighbour, whether that’s to the side (lateral forces) or underneath (centrifugal forces). The tonality of the colour is as important here as its hue. Getting this dark to light value balanced in relation to different hues is not as fully appreciated in its significance as it should be, in my opinion. Seeing closely toned colours of different hues can really excite the eye - just look at how Cézanne did it. Get these tones right and the colour sings. It should all work in unison with nothing dominating- there’s an easy movement induced in the eye when it beholds good colour. If it looks right, it is right!
What would you say are the limitations of the colour wheel? What are the advantages of its use?
Well, the most obvious advantage is in showing the relationships between the main building block colour groups. It’s a bizarre model in a way as it’s taking the two extremes of the spectrum - infra-red and ultra-violet and looping them around to meet next to one another. But it’s served artists of all types for centuries and every school kid learns about colour using this system. It’s part of our “visual vocabulary”. The colour wheel is great too at showing how colour can be harmonious (or analogous) as it moves around the wheel and contrasting as it jumps across it. The division of colours into groups provides a sort of grammar: primary, secondary, intermediate, tertiary (you can keep subdividing the sections into quaternary and quinary - though it’s always good to feel the colour before naming it, as the model controls you rather than vice-versa.
Its limitation is in explaining the more subtle colours such as the earths, pastels and especially degrees of saturation. Pink is the only pastel colour with a recognised name, yet it’s absent, for example. This is where the colour space model comes into its own.
How would you use a colour wheel to create contrast?
Initially it’s through the complements: red/green ; blue/orange ; yellow/ purple -(note purple is a mixed - secondary - colour, whereas violet is a “spectral” one). The wheel is the subtractive not the additive colour model, which deals with light not pigment (the primaries of light are red, green and blue). The subtractive model is the one we use when dealing with pigments and dyes.
I have also seen people confuse the word complement with the word compliment and use them indiscriminately. It is useful to remember that a complement is a group or a set. Now think of the secondary colours in their complementary pairs and you can see that each one is made up of the two remaining primaries: for example red and green is really red, yellow and blue - making the full set or complement.
When I use the wheel, I tell people to put the letter “a” in front of any colour; so red becomes “a” red: it can be thus tempered in many ways- cooled with a purple or blue or warmed with an orange or yellow pulling it over to vermillion (a favourite red of the Fauves). Just this letter a makes you question colour and it offers the chance for nuance. This tempering and expansion of an initial choice of colour can then be asked of the subsequent contrasting colours and the whole palette becomes wider in its expressive range. This creates more exciting - and unfamiliar - juxtapositions.
Tell me a little more about your concept of colour theory as a “three-dimensional colour space”
Albert Munsell was an American artist and teacher. He conceived of a three-dimensional colour space as a way of organising colours around the turn of the twentieth century. He wanted to map colour in the way that a musical note is fixed on the stave so it is locatable and obviously relational. He used three “coordinates” to classify a colour’s positioning in the space: hue- its actual colour, value - its tonality, and chroma - its saturation intensity. Although it isn’t quite a sphere, thinking of it as a ball is useful when translating theory into practice. Take a colour wheel and tip it so it becomes a cross-section, as if it’s the top of a cut orange. Imagine the three axes of this sphere: a vertical axis with white at the top, black at the bottom and grey in the middle. Fully saturated hues of the primary and secondary and tertiary colours run around the outside and degrees of saturation come from the centre outwards. You need to do one more thing and that’s to tip the horizontal axis up so that yellow is higher up and purple is opposite and diagonally lower. The main colours now spiral upwards to yellow then back down to the purple. This is in relation to the central tonal axis. If you think about it it makes perfect sense as you can locate red (at the “equator” and move gradually up the ball towards the white “pole” - you will get to a pink (looking across this pink you would notice it was on a similar latitude to the yellow (put another way: if you take a black and white photo you’d struggle to distinguish the yellow and the pink apart. If you move across the ball from a red to a green you are also desaturating the colour so they meet in the centre. This is in theory; in practice it is a little more complex as pigment quality determines how the colour behaves too. Watercolours are good to produce this desaturation. In full paint the mid point of the ball produces a “true grey” - usually just “off” the black / white grey combination. But theoretically it is very helpful to envisage colour in terms of: hue, tone and saturation, for practical purposes such as mixing and relating. Also if you locate a colour you can also locate its complement in this space. A deep brick red is low down the sphere and diametrically opposite that would be a light minty green for example. If you then add into the mix the use of “a” again, each colour can be thought of as a smaller ball of any size which moves through the same logic, again offering complex colour contrasts when decisions are made. On the wheel there’s triadic colour relationships (imagine a “Mercedes” symbol picking out any three colours with its points as a structural combination. Now see this in three dimensions and it provides complex and nuanced combinations. It helps to see colour in more real ways for practical use. The Munsell colour system is still used today as colour notation and classification.
Our goal with this collection is to empower beauty lovers to play; to feel confident, to enhance their natural eye colour, to modify their mood and try something new. From an artistic stand-point, how do you see colour playing a powerful role in this?
Colour is a powerful communicator. In nature it says keep away, I’m dangerous or look at me I’m attractive. We see colour at light speed. It hits us instantaneously and as such can really grab the senses. Matisse again makes a great point when discussing his paintings. I do not look for expression just in the face but in the whole arrangement of the painting. This is intriguing to consider in everyday life and how we present ourselves. A colour works best when it has another to talk to. It gains amplification when another enhances it by being part of its tonality, but gains a jolt when it has a competitor in hue such as a complement.
An eye is such a focal point. You could say that the first colour applied near it will actually be the fourth in a potentially unfolding sequence: there’s eye colour, hair colour and skin tone to relate or react to (not to mention the awareness of clothing) plus, of course context. Also one can consider scale: how one colour relates in amount to another. The face and its features have certain proportions and sizes. Colour will naturally look for dialogues elsewhere in larger areas as well as similar sized ones. Scale can really make colour communicate, powerfully. The last thing from the world of painting is “facture”. Colour is dependent upon the surface supporting it. We use the word texture but strictly speaking in art, texture is a “perceived” surface whereas facture is an actual one. (It’s where the word manufacture comes from “manus” - hand, factus- made. I relish the tactility of colour and really explore surface in quite an intense way when using colour, as it can determine such vastly different outcomes. Sometimes I’ll use a matte, velvety surface, and other times use a range of sheens and work with different viscosities and degrees of transparency too. You have to get to know the concrete-ness of your materials and push them into expressiveness. I love using paint in the service of colour and I prize a high level of technical ability (beholden to practice): this promotes a clearer visual “voice”. Titian could use a crimson and a white and alter the ratio to create the textures of fabrics: a little more red, less white and he’d get velvet, more white, less red and it would be silk. I love working with the transitions of colour, often looking at colour in triplets, quadruplets or more, trying to work out more and more complex relationships. It becomes a bit like that Star Trek game of three-dimensional chess. I may look for discordance to actively stop any harmony from occurring too quickly but push on and hope for resolution later on in the colour journey. This expands your colour memory and helps you avoid clichés.
Inspiration for colour can come from the most innocuous of places- it doesn’t just reside in the museums. It’s good to get off those screens too and look at the world around you, not the picturesque either but by being alert to colour you can notice its poetry, how it breathes. Keep clippings, notes, swatches; always build your relationship with it. You can see beauty in an old crumpled sweet wrapper or the half-tone that a dusty layer on a lorry has, or the faded, ice-lolly-like colours of a toddler’s old plastic toy. I even pin up in my studio pieces of crumpled kitchen paper, stained with multiple colours when used to clean up my brushes or palette. The twisting colours reveal unforeseen combinations and exciting interactions.
It should be said too that the word colour does not mean ‘bright’ colour (as it often assumed), it means all colour- a choir has voices which all support each other. Using colour as I have mentioned can really drive your confidence. It’s always important to not get down when it doesn’t work. (“It’s only coloured “glues”!) As you gain experience, your expectations rise so it’s never a failure if it doesn’t work, you’re further on every time and always more advanced than you think so keep going, embrace the challenges and make it work next time. I stress this to people. You have to keep smiling...though watch you don’t crack your make-up!