Rustle in the trees

Colour is a drug. Stop taking it and you can’t function. Take too much and you overdose, or you vomit out the toxic excess.

No wonder some addicts just paint in primary colours without battling through the morass of shades in the dark. They retreat from the unbearable lightness of beams and shafts.

I’ve often said that art is delicious, like iced cakes. Obviously because of the creamy textures. But it’s funny that I don’t feel the same way about colour in life. (I almost said ‘real’ life.)

If I see a person wearing too much colour I get turned off. I start to think they’re living in a time warp. I start to think of 1980s pimps who thought they were so hectic,until the monochromatic gangsters of the 90s came along.

In real life I’m most comfortable in a room where art asks a question through colour, than answering a question through colour. Simply put, I am attracted to mystery.

Colour, I guess, is always part of art’s mystery. That’s if you can see that it exists as a conscious choice, as opposed to merely being a reflection of reality.

When we were young my mom used to sing, ‘The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music.’ We never thought of the music as literal. We knew that the music was in the breeze, and in the rustle of the trees.