Blue

One of my major interests in art is color theory. Perhaps this is because I am interested in science and philosophy, and the two are combined in the physical chemistry and psychology of color, and the philosophical necessities of color. For me, one of the most rich, meaningful, and mysterious colors is blue –like the ocean, like the sky. We live on a blue planet, in a solar system of planets totally unlike ours. Blue has been meaningful for religions (it’s the color of the Virgin Mary in Catholic traditions, for example), politics (red, white, blue, blue states), gender relations, classifications, even feelings of temperature. I had originally intended to paint something other than this, but I had been studying Rothko and other similar artists and I had recently been confronted by a conservative English major who announced that all minimalist art was both ugly and satanic. I started to think: isn’t there color in nature? Isn’t the sky often a minimalist painting of sorts? What could be ugly or evil about a beautiful color? I really liked the final result of the painting and I thought: “There is nothing I could possibly do to this that would make the blue any better than it already is.”