Today while giving a private art lesson in my studio, I was talking about the use of complementary colors, one of the secrets of the Impressionists. Instead of using black or brown or some random dark color to shade or to tone down a color, the Impressionists instead used its opposite on the color wheel, creating a perfect harmony that enhanced each color. Opposites were also placed side by side in areas of a painting, causing each to vibrate.
As Tom Allen, a long gone but not forgotten art teacher who guided me in my youth, once explained, the whole color wheel, indeed, shows us the beauty and harmony at the center of the universe.
He taught that any symmetrical geometrical form, laid on the color wheel, points to colors that harmonize perfectly with each other.
A straight line, for example, points to opposites, such as blue and orange, or red and green. This is called a complementary color scheme. An equilateral triangle points to three colors that form an "equilateral" or "Triadic" color scheme. The same is true of pentangles, squares, and so on.
As Tom further observed, equal mixtures of such opposites (or triads, etc.) always yield a neutral gray. He likened this to " the stillpoint at the calm center of the universe" and offered it as an example of a divine order behind life. This explanation awakened me to an understanding of color that has stayed with me ever since.
Today the two of us explored this lesson with a simple orange. I placed an orange on a sheet of white paper and lit it with a bright incandesent light. Immediately we could each see the blue in its shadow, created by physics I cannot fully explain but can observe.
Hope, my student, went on to create a small painting of the orange, using subtle combinations of blue and orange in the simple Zen-like simplicity of this still life. After she left, I did the same exercise with the orange, enthralled by this reminder of the beauty of opposites.
As I created this 8x10 acrylic, titled "Orange and Blue," I immersed myself in a parallel truth of life — that withinin our shadow lies our perfect opposite, inseparable and beautiful.
Often we deny and disown all that we see as the exact opposite of ourselves, and yet the truth is that by embracing and "owning" that what seems so "other" is really but a hidden part of ourselves.
And the more that we recognize that truth, the greater becomes our capacity to love.
Like this simple orange on a sheet of white paper shows us, let us embrace the beauty of the opposites of life, and in doing so, may we receive all of life's blessings.
ORANGE AND BLUE
Simple and round,
O to be so perfect.
How were you made?
How did you come to be?
And how long ago
Did we learn
That softly within your
Shadow lies
Your perfect opposite,
Inseparable
Since time began?
— Susan Pitcairn, 1-2-10
