Reflected Light II

I love color blends in paintings.

When ultramarine blue was introduced as an artist’s color in the late Gothic era the late Gothic ...and subsequent renaissance... painters created paintings with skies that blended beautifully from darker to lighter blue.

In later eras portraits and still lifes had beautifully blended backgrounds.

In our time silk screen prints achieve wonderful color blends.

The American photographer, Peter Hujar, who worked only in black and white, created beautiful dark to light blends in his darkroom work.

On the streets of Oaxaca it is the sun which has mastered the blending technique. Here in Jalatlaco, on the corner of Cinco de Mayo and Curtirudias, translated as tannery...Jalatlaco was once the center of leather tanning in Oaxaca,..there are two hotels. Los Pilares is on the East side of Cinco de Mayo and the Hotel Magda on the west. When the morning sun hits the pale lime green Magda it casts a wonderful green glow over the yellow Los Pilares. When the afternoon sun hits Los Pilares part of the long Magda wall is bathed in yellow over the pale lime green. The front section of that wall extends beyond Los Pilares and reflects the blue of the sky. The subtle union of the two reflected lights creates a fabulous blend that takes my breath away. In that photograph, on the extreme left, you can see the local color, the pale lime green, in full sunlight.

In the photograph of the porch of the other yellow building you can see that when a color is reflected onto the same color it intensifies the color. Notice the post nearest the camera, how it reflects the blue of the sky and how it seems diminished by comparison. This is why oil paintings are made over a white ground: most oil paint colors are translucent and the light passes through them and is reflected off the white and back through the color and it is intensified. Paintings made over black or dark grounds, mostly modern art paintings, look like death not yet warmed over.

As I said. I love color blends in paintings...or anywhere else for that matter.