More Color Choices

I asked several additional Gallery artists how they choose colors for their nonrepresentational work.  Here's what I learned.

Silk painter Clara Graves told me "When I create one of the woven pieces from my New Worlds series, I have no plan in mind at all. I simply go to my collection of painted silks and pull colors that appeal to me. This is usually quite a large and colorful pile of silk. As I go through them again and again, a particular color pattern within the fabrics attracts me and I begin working to find other pieces of silk that will work with that initial piece. Sometimes I want to subdue it a bit, as in the area of blue green blended with the violet in the piece below.

Clara Graves, Toward the Sun

"Not wanting the whole work to be too quiet, I then put together some more vibrant and complementary silks to play off against that original section of the piece."

Anne Sanderoff-Walker, a weaver and felter, says "Weaving is all about color. I find inspiration everywhere. I remember when I was a kid, blue and green were never seen together, but looking at a bluebird sky and the trees in leaf, it seems so obvious that green and blue should be used together and I do. Recently I’ve been going outside my color comfort zone and using reds, oranges and pinks together. Now that I’m comfortable with the “hot” colors, I need to look beyond my newest comfort zone for something new."

Anne often decides the colors in her woven work by her selection of yarns.  Sometimes she defers the decision on color by weaving a white garment, then dyeing it, as seen in the shawl below, which was dyed using a fold and clamp (shibori) technique.  She says that "This is my newest passion in use of color. Every time I dye I look forward to the surprise results."

Anne Sanderoff-Walker, shawl

Janet Barnard is a weaver, silk dyer, garment maker, and silk paper sculptor.  Her palette is distinctive.  She says that her color choices change with the day and whether she is weaving or dyeing because the colors interact very differently in these techniques. She continues that "I prefer darker palettes as opposed to pastel, and muted colors as opposed to  primary ones. Since I rarely use real images, I can play with color and be surprised with what I get."

Here are examples of two of Janet's recent dyed fabrics:

Janet Barnard, silkscreened cloth

Janet Barnard, silkscreened cloth

You can see examples of Janet's other work and other color choices  in our January blog post on Wondrous, Lustrous Silk. 

Color Choices

One important aspect of any work of art is color.  We respond to the hues selected (red, blue, etc.) and their values (pale, dark, or something between).  Many books have been written on color choices in art and we all have preferred colors for our clothes and our homes. This month, our gallery theme was Van Gogh's painting of irises.  Many of the members who responded to the theme did so by using the colors of the painting rather than the actual image of an iris.

Janet Stollnitz told me "I looked at Van Gogh’s painting, “Irises,” a number of times.  I liked the colors, but was unsure of what I could weave that would relate to the painting. Since most loom-controlled weaving does not easily lend itself to pictorial images as the interlacement of the yarns is horizontal­ (the weft­) and vertical­ (the warp), I thought in terms of color, texture, and structure of the cloth rather than representational images. In the midst preparing hand-dyed yarns for sale at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, I noticed a skein of hand-dyed Tencel that reminded me of the colors in the painting.  The yarn had shades of purple, green, blue, and a little yellow­–perfect!  A woven scarf would require more yarn than I had in the single skein.  Looking through my stash of commercially dyed yarns I spotted a cone of yarn that was a beautiful blue–sky.  I also found some hand-dyed purple and green silk yarns­–more irises.  I decided to “feature” the variegated yarn by not only making it a wide stripe, but also using a textured weave structure.  The additional silk yarns were narrower stripes woven as different twills. Wanting to emphasize the purple of the irises, I used a solid color purple silk for the weft.  Although my scarf doesn’t say Van Gogh’s “Irises,” it definitely was influenced by the painting."

Janet Stollnitz, scarf (detail)

Janet Stollnitz, scarf

Another artist who worked from the colors of the painting was Masha Kosmos, who submitted a bolero.  Though Masha often does pictorial work, in this case she used the colors of irises rather than their image.

Masha Kosmos, bolero
Photograph by Alexander Fedin

I also asked members of our gallery how they choose colors for their nonrepresentational work, which could be in any colors of the rainbow, when there isn't a theme that suggests particular colors.  Here is Janet Stollnitz's response to that question:

"Floris asked how I usually decide on colors for my scarves­, my procedure when there isn’t a theme.  Do I go my yarn stash and pull some colors that I like together?  Do I start with an inspiration such as a picture or a flower?  Do I start with the color wheel?  Working backwards, it is extremely rare that I look at the color wheel. Sometimes I am inspired by a picture or a flower.  Sometimes I look at my yarn stash and put together a collection of yarns that I think would work together.  More often my color selection is a combination of inspiration from an exhibit and what yarns are available in my stash.  However, my stash is easily changed as I often dye my yarns."

In my own work, art quilts, I sometimes start with a fabric I love and pull other fabrics from my stash of hand-dyes to complement it.  An example of this is "Spring View," which began with the mottled rosy fabric in the "windows."

Floris Flam, Spring View

In other cases, I begin with a painting I like and choose colors from my stash that echo those in the painting, though not necessarily in the same proportions.  For my collage, "Wind Dance," I started with a Rothko painting (Untitled, 1949) and chose fabrics in many textures–hand-dyed cotton and silk organza, painted cheesecloth, Lutradur®, and Gossamer–in the colors of the painting. 

Floris Flam, Wind Dance

Choosing in this way sometimes leads me to colors and combinations outside my usual palette.