Color Me Gray
Of all the colors, why gray?
Well, from my home outside of Washington, DC, the gray, winter morning skies keep calling me. Rather than perceiving the color as dreary and downcast, I'd like to re-forecast gray as the simultaneously dynamic and subtle powerhouse hue that it is.
In this piece I explore a few aspects that my gray matter (actually pink) has been noodling:
The artist’s magical mixing of beautiful gray hues
An ode to Vermeer’s understated, opal-like grays
Our feminine color bind—to gray or not to gray
Embracing “gray thinking.”
Gray Remix — The Artist’s Magical Games for Your Eyes
One of my favorite artistic lessons was creating a magically beautiful version of a seemingly drab color, like, for instance, gray.
The thing is, it’s not hard or mysterious. There’s a formula based on science. What you need is a bit of curiosity.
I thought it would be fun to share with you. So I’ve created these color games for your eyes. Enjoy!
BTWs—There’s a link to the answers at the end.
Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, c.1662, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
An Ode to Vermeer
An Artist Who Rocked Gray
One artist who rocked gray was the 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.
As you might have noticed, many of my artistic stories begin with my father, artist Frank Wright. My father’s love of Vermeer permeated my childhood and early adulthood. In the 1970s and ‘80s, he painted contemporary domestic interiors (our home) such as Thanksgiving Dinner with yours truly at the dining room table. See if you can find the various homages to Vermeer.
As a teenager, my parents and I visited many, many art museums in the US and abroad, often with a quest-like fervor to seek out paintings by Vermeer. From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam to the National Gallery, London, we would stand in front Vermeer paintings and study the Dutch painter’s magical illusion of quiet reality.
This is one reason why I became an art historian-artist combo. I love the history of art as well as the making. They are totally linked for me.
Here goes a bit of “art history Suzanne.”
Frank Wright, Thanksgiving Dinner, 1982
Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c.1660, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Before the Impressionists…
Vermeer was a master of the oil glaze painting technique which dominated from the 16th century until the Impressionists’ rocked the world with tubes of directly applied paint in the later half of the 19th century. Oil glaze painting is like layering stain glass. If you layer a yellow glass over a blue glass, it will look green.
Why bother?
So why go to all of this trouble of layering thin glazes? Why not just mix two colors together and be done with it? Painting with oil glazes gives colors a luminous quality. Although we don’t know it’s happening, when we look at a Vermeer, our eyes experience light actually going through the colored glazes, bouncing off the painting’s under surface, and coming back out.
Suzanne’s “Vermeer”
Early in my own artistic practice, I painted a copy of The Girl with a Red Hat, a Vermeer in the National Gallery, DC. Implementing Vermeer’s process really helped me understand how he masterfully employed oil glaze techniques to conjure reality. (I would later teach Vermeer’s technique in my adult-education classes, which was a lot of fun!)
What does this have to do with the color gray? Everything.
Let’s employ your new knowledge of beautiful grays using complementary colors. So if you apply a translucent oil glaze of let's say orange over its complement, blue, what color will it appear to be? You got it, gray! I made this little illustration to help demonstrate.
Johannes Vermeer, The Lacemaker, 1669-70, Louvre, Paris
Why is Vermeer so special?
Thousands of painters used the oil glaze technique. We need to factor in Vermeer’s cutting-edge understanding of optics,* his tremendous powers of observation, and his exquisite skill with glazes. Take a look at The Lacemaker, a tiny little painting in the Louvre, Paris. (Ask me later about the time I bumped the painting’s frame, the alarm went off, and the French guards came running. Quite an experience.)
Subtle is significant
While our attention is naturally drawn to the girl’s gaze and her hands, try studying the shadowed side of her face, her hair, and the pearl-like gray wall. Part of what makes Vermeer’s quiet paintings sing is his attention to these non-subjects with seemingly non-important, humble hues of gray. He masterfully layered colored glazes to build up these opal-like grays.
From umpteen scientific studies, we know he paid a great deal of artistic attention to these less sexy areas which give the painting a remarkable atmospheric quality and subtly captivate our eyes.
*There’s been a lot of art-historical, tempest-in-a-teapot debate as to whether the Dutch master employed optic devices like the the camera obscura (a pin-hole camera) or various lenses, cue research on Vermeer’s connections with contemporary lens grinders.
To Gray or Not to Gray
That is the Feminine Question
What a tremendously complicated hot topic! As a graying 50-something, I’m fascinated. I can’t seem to stop myself from researching.
Here’s where I am at the moment:
Hair color, age and identity are intertwined into a tight braid.
I have come across so many interesting and contradictory perspectives. I’ve put them into a little video for us to mull as well as a SURVEY! KEEP SCROLLING!
BTWs, gray hair in this graphic indicates naturally gray hair rather than dyed gray hair
Add Your Experience
Take the 3-Minute Survey!
Graynaissance
No matter how you slice it, there is a trend towards gray hair for women, a “Graynaissance,” if you will, with over a million #grayhair hashtags on Instagram alone.
Click here for a few articles, blogs, websites I’ve found interesting.
Beyond Black and White
As I was thinking about these intense, contrasting views regarding our hair color, the ultimate visual contrast: popped up: black and white.
Black and white thinking is binary thinking in either/or terms like: yes/no, right/wrong, etc. While black/white thinking is necessary and instinctual for a lot of everyday behaviors, it can also lead us, as I know from experience, into unnecessarily rigid thought patterns.
Check out this article about some of the health consequences of too much black/white thinking. And read on to embrace Grey Thinking!
When You Think in Gray
While I've used a lot of creativity and innovation thinking techniques to explore multiple viewpoints, I was intrigued by the term “gray thinking” which was new to me. I found this recent article, “The Value of Seeing the World in Gray,” in Medium. Here’s a great nugget:
“The value of grey thinking is to break free from the incredibly tight constraints that rule our thinking. It’s about being liberated from binary thinking, being for or against an idea instantaneously, and enhancing intellectual independence. The grey is where we find deeper reflective dialogue. . . When you consciously want to think in grey, you will open up to people, mindsets, opinions and the world in general.”
I’d like to apply gray thinking to the gray-hair debate out there, with generosity of spirit to everyone’s choices.
Mindful word choices
As a mindfulness experiment, I’m working on my awareness of my word choices. I’ve made this graphic to help me. So I thought I’d share.
As we wrap up this piece on the color gray, I hope you come away with a few gray thoughts to noodle on, from subtle, dynamic artistic powerhouse to women’s identity signifier and metaphor for instinctual vs. mindful thinking habits. I know what my homework is.
Namas-gray.