top of page

Blue Musings 1 - ideas

  • Writer: sharonkingston
    sharonkingston
  • Mar 20, 2020
  • 2 min read

I knew there would be 16 shades of blue, but what did I really want to say about these blues? "blue's chromatic scale corresponds to an emotional spectrum of highly complex associations that move from the airy transparency linked with joy to the saturated depths we connect with sorrow". Siri Hustvedt in her book 'mysteries of the rectangle'.


One idea was to take a blue landscape, create a paint by number of it, and have 16 blues as reference colors.

Not my wheelhouse, but I spent a bit of time exploring how to do this.




I then took a Cezanne blue landscape and pulled it into ColorSnap and identified 16 shades of Blue (via Sherwin Williams). Again, not sure how to execute on this other than a mixed media collage sort of thing. It was really just part of the process of examining this idea.







I had already explored taking the actual blue names (good conscience red and blue, Egyptian blue, hermetic blue, thunderstorm blue, completely supportless blue) and creating abstract paintings in 2014/2015, so I didn't want to repeat that effort.





Finally, the statement Paula Modersohn-Becker made about Cezanne's work to Rilke really called out to me. Like a great thunderstorm. And the thunderstorm blue in Letters on Cezanne was a description of 'the black clock'--the original source of Tori Amos song. See, finally coming full circle to the original inspiration. I also latched onto the statement by Cezanne that he himself considered the colors as numinous essences. All this felt more in-line with my voice. Because Rilke talked often of marrying dread and bliss, I looked for that pairing of polarities. Thunderstorm/rage/energy--Respite/safety/calm. When doing the ColorSnap above I had noted that many of the blues had respite like names. So, the final idea to execute became one thunderstorm blue painting sharing a space with many small respite blue paintings (pulled from Sherwin Williams) to make up the 16 shades of blue. Showing the range of blues in a numinous essence way and consistent with my atmospheric landscape voice. here are 4 of the respite blues in progress to give you just a tas





 
 
 

Comments


studio/gallery

open by appointment only

please call / text

360-739-2474 or

email sharonkingston@me.com

ALL SALES FINAL.

NO REFUNDS or EXCHANGES ON ORIGINAL PAINTINGS  and FRAMES.

  • Instagram

Source and technique have melded in my paintings in such a way that poetry, nature, color, light, mood and atmosphere are at one with my method of layering oil on canvas.  Void of visible brush stokes and seemingly lit from within, I have spent my career mastering my method and using the outer world as a shoreline to our inner longings.  My paintings, often paired with poetry that I am contemporaneously reading, offer an opening to the contemplation that accompanies those moments in nature where melancholic beauty quiets us.  Mimicry of an objective nature is less the goal than evoking the mood and atmospheres of our existence.  

In my recent paintings the sea and sky have taken on a larger and more energetic role, giving me the space to explore a loose yet structured mark making—just as the sea and sky themselves are both chaos and order.  I find inspiration in scrims; the veil of fog, the glare of sunlight on water, the quieting as night approaches and everything is reduced to shadow and light, the revealing of a well of color at dawn and the heaviness and energy of a storm.

I live in Bellingham and have a storefront studio in the downtown area.  I have been exhibiting my work professionally for the past 20 years.  My paintings are held in collections throughout the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.

I have exhibited my work extensively in galleries and curated shows since 2008. I currently show my work at my storefront studio only--by choice-- and have no gallery affiliation at this time.  

Make an appointment to view paintings by sending an email here.

SHARON KINGSTON STUDIO

203 PROSPECT ST

Bellingham WA  98225

studio gallery 
open by appointment

please send me a text with the
day and time you'd like to come by.
360-739-2474

bottom of page