Orange – Perspectives from The Artist’s Road

Orange

Perspectives from The Artist’s Road

Orange Cosmos, Marigolds and Iris     Photo John Hulsey

“Orange is like a man –

convinced of his own powers.”

                    – Wassily Kandinsky, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, 1912

   We’ve been thinking about the color orange lately, as we admire our orange Cosmos flowers in the summer garden. The flowers absorb all other wavelengths of sunlight, only giving back the orange hues. They really stand out amongst the other flowers there, much as any orange object really stands out in any situation. We normally think of bright red as the stand-out color, but orange is almost universally used as a warning color or as an aid to visibility in signage, school buses, clothing, equipment and many items and products which need to grab attention or seem exciting. Look around your home and you will probably find an orange-colored item. Notice how brightly it contrasts with the surroundings. It is also often used as a happy color in packaging, publishing, and every conceivable media. We are fascinated by how it can both serve as a warning – (think of giant orange hornets) – and as a delight. Orange is, in fact, closer to the center of our color vision, between yellow and red, at 590 – 625 nanometers, whereas red is closer to the extreme end at 700 nanometers. That may partly explain why it stands out to our eyes so well.

   Because of its attention-grabbing effects, orange is tricky to use in painting, unless one is painting a sunrise or sunset. It is a matter of quantity—a little goes a long way! While painting the blue iris at the asylum in St. Rémy, France, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, “There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” Van Gogh declared that if one put blue into a painting, then one must put in yellow and orange, too. He knew the power of complementary colors and sensed how to use them so they helped each other. I think our Cosmos will make a nice still life sitting in a blue vase.