Gypsy, A Study on Color and Balance

Wow, it has been a couple of years since I last posted on my blog. Despite having taken a hiatus from my artwork, I have created a couple of pieces. Gypsy is my latest creation that I am pleased to share with you. This piece represents my return to the studio after a long period of thoughtful inner reflection. The white horse often seen as a spirit animal symbolizes balance and spiritual awareness within oneself much like the proverbial yin/yang, the wild, playful, adventurous side vs the tame, responsible and loyal side of ourselves. My goal was to portray this concept on cloth by illustrating how the use of color can be balanced to attain a neutral white color. This piece began by using a white piece of cotton and an assorted palette of both paint and thread in various hues of pink and blue. For this study, I decided to illustrate how balance can be achieved by using color that tugs from pink to blue in order to create highlights and shadows that read as an overall neutral white. A very bright light pink  was used as the brightest highlight on her left (right facing) eye and cheekbone. Duller shades of pinks were used for less intense highlights whereas the converse is true with regards to blue and its corresponding shadows.

Again, the idea was to neutralize pinks and blues to achieve a white color, a rather difficult task when starting off on an already white piece of cotton! This was a daunting idea that I really was not sure would work. The question remained: Would the horse read as a crazy, wild looking pink and blue horse or would the colors neutralize one another so as to appear white? I must admit that I have never worked in this palette before and I was rather nervous about the  outcome. The background was painted black to further increase the contrast. What a fun and interesting study?! I really learned so much from experimenting with both thread and paint to illustrate this idea. I really feel that the use of pink and blue were quite effective at displaying balance and neutralizing color to portray the white horse. I also believe that this technique lends a somewhat surreal aspect to her as well. I am inspired to try other pieces that utilize colors to neutralize each other and see where that leads me. I hope you enjoyed reading about my experiment in color and balance. Please feel free to chime in and let me know your thoughts. Does Gypsy appear pink and blue or does she read as white? Do you agree about the surrealistic aspect this technique seems to impart? I hope to hear an array of thoughts on the matter and enter into a creative discussion.