Day Twenty-Three

12"x12", oil on canvas

This is a rather small piece, with wide stretcher bars. When I was preparing the surface with the purple, I painted the canvas edges purple as well, so I regard the entire thing more as a box or an object than a surface. I created this meandering line composition with a peachy tan color made largely from burnt sienna and titanium white. At present, it is just on the front of the canvas, but I think I will most likely extend it over the edges to reinforce the three-dimensionality of this painting.

I learned an interesting thing about the color purple this past week in my Materials, Techniques & Conservation class: it is the only secondary color which cannot be represented by a single wavelength of light (only a mixture of red and violet). The color wheel is kind of an artificial relationship to light anyway, but this stood out as a unique property to me. Additionally, purple is one of three words in the English language which have no true rhyme (oddly perhaps, the others are orange and silver). All these things have made purple seem the most intriguing and bizarre color to me, and I like the way it holds its ground in this piece.