Project statement

Color Diary

This project currently consists of eight paintings in the same size and each with a different date on. The dates indicate the day the painting was made and are written in the same natural and anonymous font on each. The choices of color and form correspond to the feelings experienced that day and my own translation of them into color and form, hence the name Color Diary. It is not meant for the viewer to know exactly what feelings each painting represents but the color and form, work as indicators of what set of feelings they represent. Although, as my research points out, the relationship between color and feelings is subjective and varies between different people and also the same person in different contexts.

I have worked with texture and color to mimic my feelings into color but the interpretation might lead different people to believe that a painting represents completely different feelings. What I hope is that one will see that feelings are temporary and passing as each painting is very different, which also makes the project an accurate representation of myself, since I go between feeling a lot of different things in a short amount of time.

Color Diary is an ongoing project without an end. Real diaries do not have an end, one can always take up a blank page and a pen and start writing, the same works for Color Diary. I can any day make a painting that represents my emotions in color. Therefore, the representation of the work should show that by displaying them in an unfinished grid.

Abstract

Abstract art enabled the color element to stop being dependent on form and to become the main focus of the painting. In abstract art, color and form have no related associations to our outer world. Instead of depicting the external world, color can serve as a means to express an artist’s inner vision. This essay is mainly based on a neurobiologist’s research on color in an artistic context. How we experience and perceive color is influenced by our learned experiences and visual associations. Wassily Kandinsky and Mark Rothko, two masters of abstract art, used the color element to achieve ‘spiritual value’ and evoke an ‘emotional response’ in the observer. Kandinsky established his own theory of color, in which he believed an artist could touch the human psyche.

Meanwhile, Rothko brought about emotional value by reducing all elements in his paintings except fields of color. He became iconic for his emotionally evocative color field paintings that have a peculiarly emotional effect. The abstract paintings of Kandinsky and Rothko have the ability to make our brains reconstruct new images since they have no resemblance to the outer natural world. This shows why reducing the elements in a painting to color and form only, might evoke an emotional response, arguably greater than a more realistic painting of something we are used to seeing. Kandinsky and Rothko have created masterpieces that enable observers to reference their art to personal subjects rather than material objects in the outer world.