As we know the impact of color in art is undeniable. Color is a powerful tool for communicating your feelings and ideas. It may be your first element of consideration for you when you begin creating your work of art. An excellent painter knows the importance of developing an extensive knowledge about color, it’s various attributes and effects on viewers optically, viscerally, mentally, spiritually and more.
Many scientific studies have proven the healing impact of color and how it affects our behavior, moods, and thoughts. Color has the ability to bring healing energy, soothe our frazzled nerves, and also motivate and empower us.
For this article I chose a few different famous artists whose use of color has had an indelible impact on artists and viewers over the course of decades. You may be inspired by them and incorporate their ideas when creating your own art.
Vincent Van Gogh’s Beliefs About Color
Vincent van Gogh frequently expressed his preoccupation with color in his writings. He wrote, “…the painter of the future will be a colourist the like of which has never yet been seen. But I’m sure I am right to think that it will come in a later generation, and it is up to us to do all we can to encourage it, without question or complaint.”
Van Gogh was deeply aware of the relationship colors had on each other and wrote, “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” That is apparent in his painting above titled “Bedroom in Arles”.
Claude Monet’s Obsession With Color
Claude Monet exclaimed, “Color is my day long obsession, joy and torment.” The artist repeatedly painted the same subject at different times of day and in different weather conditions.
One of his best known series is “The Rouen Cathedral”, shown here. He captured the façade under different lighting conditions. They are excellent examples of how light affects color on subjects. He reworked these paintings in his studio, as he explored myriad examples of colors and moods.
When giving advice to artists about color Monet wrote, “When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape.”
Bold Colors Used by Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe is known for having stated, “I found I could say things with colors that I could not say in any other way, things for which I had no words.” Among her many strengths, she was a master at using both analogous and complementary colors to create energy and bold contrast with a sense of harmony and balance.
An example is this is her painting “Lake George Reflection”, shown below. This dynamic painting which she created in 1921-1922 measures 36″ x 60″. In this work of art O’Keeffe is a forceful leader who takes the viewer in the direction she wants us to go. The inimitable master of color and form achieves so much by using a juxtaposition of colors albeit a limited and simple palette.
O’Keeffe was aware that using opposite colors — shades of red and green — serve to express power and contrast, while analogous colors –red against purple and blue with green — create passages of quiet and calmness. She struck a balance. Also notice her use of black and white, racing across the middle of the canvas, without which this painting would not have the same glorious intensity and counterbalance.
Sonia Delaunay Brought Color to New Levels
Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) was an artist known for her experiments with color in art and design known as simultanéisme. In this mode of creative expression simultaneous design occurs when one design, when placed next to another, affects both.
She was the co-founder of the “Orphism” with her husband Robert Delaunay. This art movement is known for its use of strong colors and geometric shapes. The artists united color to form in order to achieve visual intensity on the surface of the canvas. They placed lines of primary color beside those of secondary color, understanding that the scientific effect on the eye of such combinations would result in art that could be just as scintillating to the viewer.
Delaunay extended the visual exploration of this theory to a range of fields beyond painting, developing an entire career in textile design.
J. M. W. Turner and The Color Yellow
The British painter J. M. W. Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolorist known for his expressive colorization and sublime sunlit seascapes. He had a strong passion for using the color yellow. This caused critics to criticize him, writing that his images were “afflicted with jaundice.”
The artist used the experimental watercolor Indian Yellow, which was a fluorescent paint derived from the urine of mango-fed cows.
To achieve brighter accents the artist employed the synthetic Chrome Yellow, a lead-based pigment known to cause delirium.
Helen Frankenthaler’s Innovative Evolution Using Color
Helen Frankenthaler was innovative in her use of color and it evolved throughout her career. She began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. Spontaneity was important to her, as the artist stated, “A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once.”
She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as “Color Field”.
In the 1960s, she began to place strips of colors near the edges of her paintings, thus involving the edges as a part of the compositional whole. She began to make use of single stains and blots of solid color against white backgrounds, often in the form of geometric shapes. By the 1970s, she started using thicker paint that allowed her to employ bright colors almost reminiscent of Fauvism. Throughout the 1970s, Frankenthaler explored the joining of areas of the canvas through the use of modulated hues, and experimented with large, abstract forms. Her work in the 1980s was characterized as much calmer, with its use of muted colors and relaxed brushwork.
Picasso said, “Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”
Did You Know?
In most ancient cultures the color gold was considered to represent the sun and the spirit of God. That changed when Giotto, an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages, believed the color blue represented heaven and eternal existence. He became obsessed with the color and painted the ceiling of the Scrovegni Chapel a radiant blue. This was a complete departure from the gold that had been used by previous painters that was associated with opulence and grandeur. The blue sky that fills a large portion of many scenes in the cathedral provides a unifying and expansive feeling of unlimited possibilities.
There is also an increasing number of medical facilities are purchasing art and consider color to be an important factor in the healing process and positive impact on patients, staff and visitors.
Wassily Kandinsky stated, “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.” He also is known for writing “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.”
Piet Mondrian wrote, “Every new component in the creative process has relevance and establishes a relationship. As Piet Mondrian reminds us, “Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing.”
Marc Chagall stated, “All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites”. In other words, “Friends” are the analogous colors — those that are side by side on a 12-part color wheel. The “lovers” Chagall refers to are complementary colors — those hues that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel.
Read “Do You Know These Facts About Color? Take This Quiz”
An Exhibition All About Color!
Shown here is art from “The Healing Power of Color” Exhibition which I curated in 2024 and presented on The Healing Power of ART & ARTISTS website. I curate this “Color” exhibition every year.
The work I see is so phenomenal. I am, was an abstract artist. Thank you for so much inspiration.