Colour and Abstraction: Symbolism, association, and metaphor

Pendle Hill, Hand made oil on wooden surface, 77x77cm 2023

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At the centre of my practice are concerns about the way in which the material history of pigment/colour is elided with human history. I start with a prompt in the now, look for an historical event that has common features to the current event, research the history of that event, and the psycho-social-economic interpretations that are possible, in particular  but not soleylooking at the material history of the historic event, I reseach the pigments that play out in that event. The pigments become the pallette for the new collection. The forms and manner of laying the paint on the surface also carry metaphoric meaning that arises from the reseach.  Within the pieces is space created for the viewer to make their own connections, space to fall into and get a little lost.

Colour And Meaning: Symbolism
At the centre of my practice is a very particular relationship to pigment and colour. A symbolism, but not in the definitive way of Kandinsky…
“The starting point is the study of colour and its effect on men”. (*1) Kandinsky
who goes on to describe a definitive symbolism where this colour has a specific meaning that is that, and is related to his pantheist religious ideas.   But also not entirely unrelated to that, as I do believe that there are ways in which colour can bring us close to a sense of the universal.  We are after all animals that,  barring sensory disabilities, experience colour both as part of our daily lives and our experience of art objects.Philip Ball (*2) asks us 
“What in short is your relationship with materials?…Use of colour in art is determined at least as much by the artist’s personal inclination and cultural context as by the materials at hand.”
I take this quite literally. I source my pigments based on my research, I buy them, collect them and make them as part of my practice. I do not rely on what is easy or to hand.  My central idea is that critical deconstruction of the material history of ordinary things can give us access to a universality of being.
Colour/pigment and Meaning by Association, 
We handle every day things, and always have. They contain our material history but also our history of cultural and human connection, not as written but as felt in the every day.  There are the objects of religious significance, the objects that denote power and prestige, and the everyday textiles , domestic goods or agricultural  materials  of a particular time including the made objects all the way to the earth we walk on.
And it was earth that gave us our first art materials in the form of ochres, umbers, manganese black and  the produce to make carbon blacks that make colour.
James Fox postulates that,
“There are perhaps three types of meaning as it pertains to colour. The first derives from the effective or psychological significance of hues and shades,..”  (something Kandinsky above thought could be codified)…..”The second is created not by subjective responses but by social conventions” (what Kandinsky was more likely to be codifying, along with his own personal responses). “The third and the richest historically is generated by association. Humans have been making this type of meaning for millennia…Colours of course aren’t inherently meaningful. Their meanings are created by the people who live with them…..”(*3)

Colour and Meaning: Association, non defined
And it is this third association of meaning with colour, and meaning by association,  that sits at the heart of what I do.  So, my palette for a collection of work arises from research into a historical event or place which has resonance with something that has my attention in the now.  The newest and developing series of work that I am making  has its basis in the provocation of hate speach being used by government ministers in reference to rufugees. I wanted to look at an era when the government of the day started a campaign against  the weakest people in society and that brought me to the witch panics of the late 15 early 1600s. I have spent the last year collecting earth pigments from the villages where women lived who were accused during the panics, the collection of materials to make pigments such as wood for charcoal, clay for ochre, lichen for dye….materials that would have been used at the time and hold some of the reality of the agricultural and textile dominated economy of rural areas in England, and are materials that the accused women would have had direct contact with.

​Thinking behind The Earth Beneath Her Feet

After a period of material experiments to clarify the physical nature of the pigments, I considered the ideas about othering,  infection,  idea spread, partisanship, fertility, environmental degredation, economic decline, drowning, new technology, political flux and  exclusion. I collected pigments from the earth from villages across England where people had lived who were caught up in and accused of witch craft during the panics. I researched and collected pigments that were contemporaneous. And in the making of my work I have played with imagery and processes of laying down pigment that contain life rings,  cellular, germ and blood like forms, blood, infection, obfuscation, exclusion.

Metaphoric value
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The truth is though,  that even though I am building up a personal symbolism in the colour I use, based on its provenance and an understanding on its material qualities, in terms of how it meets the viewer I am with Louise Bourgeois when she says,
“Colour is stronger than language. It is a subliminal communication” Louise Bourgeois (*4)
And in how I want my work to meet audiences, and in my intention for my work in meeting audiences this is the case. I work in the abstract because while I am personally trying to unite experience into a kind of ephemeral universal whole I do not want to be didactic.  I want to leave room for interpretation, for linkages to something other than my own specificity. 
I want to allow the viewer to have their relationship to the colour,  and the work, and for it to be their own. Their own combination of psychological, subjective and cultural response, their particular human response arising from mine.  
Rothko says,
"to strip away while losing sight of the essential human element is a failure to communicate essences, and it is an abdication of the artists central role…” (*5)


1Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual In Art
2. Philip Ball, Bright Earth, the invention of Colour. p5
3. James Fox, the World According To Colour p8-9
4Louise Bourgeous quoted by Christine Meyer-thuss, "Designing Free Fall" pp178-9 5.
5 Mark Rothko quoted by Christopher Rothko, From Inside to Outside p100

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Beneath The Surface, Hand made oil on canvas, 120x150cm 2023

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