Action and passion between light and darkness: colour reveals the most human qualities of light. If white light is divine, colour is its incarnation in the human world. Every colour, like every material, corresponds to a movement of psychophysical energy, a different vibration and location. From the very first steps of the method, these relationships help us become aware of both the medium and ourselves. This inseparable consciousness–world structure grows ever subtler and lighter as we move from the primordial, instinctive gesture of mark-making to the refined, fleeting light of colours.
Colour as an expression of light
Light creates colours, which are like musical notes within sound. They can be orchestrated and composed like music, or they can become noise. Colours must be explored and understood as musical notes and their harmonics are. Nature teaches us much about harmony, but it is the human spirit that has truly elevated, developed and orchestrated what nature has given us, making it even more divine. The painter is a musician and composer. Light reveals, while darkness conceals. Colour gives light its qualities and enables it to act as the painter wishes, revealing aspects that would otherwise remain invisible. Colour thus takes on an allegorical character, becoming a metaphor for describing phenomena; in abstract art, it becomes a phenomenon in its own right, with full force and autonomy. Pure colour, without a figurative reference, becomes a language and an emotional and spiritual content par excellence. This seemingly simpler way of using colour is actually the most difficult and complex to manage, because colour directly carries the responsibilities of form, light and shade, and space. Freed from drawing, form, figuration and therefore the three-dimensional space created by light and shadow, colour resembles a wild horse, free and uncontrollable: in an instant all its strength and energy may be destroyed or diminished. Awareness of the subtle rules and compositional limits of the vital energy of colour can guide us across the page; otherwise only the undifferentiated chaos of chromatic noise awaits. The use of colour we seek to develop will not be merely subjective and instinctive, but also methodical, ordered and, as far as possible, scientific, grounded in theories of perception. We will seek contact with intuitive and universal principles through which chromatic revelations can be guided by a new chromatic and spiritual sensitivity discovered in the workshop.
Artistic and Technical Objectives
To compose harmoniously with colour in both time and space. To understand the physical characteristics of colour.
Existential Objectives
To understand the correspondences between colours and mental and emotional contents. To release one’s emotions. To strengthen faith in oneself and in life.
Spiritual Objectives
To connect with the music and poetry of colour.
Workshop Topics
Action and passion between light and shadow; colours and inner states; colours as allegory; the action of colour in human beings; where colour is formed; colour physiology; colour psychology; theories of colour perception; colour in social communication; colour and dreams.