Painting Winter

   When Monet decided to paint winter he looked for snow because, the glare of the yellow light of the sun on the snow causes us to see an after image of blue-violet. The subject was loaded with possibilities for complementary colors in simultaneous contrast. The shadows on the snow are especially blue-violet against the yellow-white of the sun splashed snow.  Impressionism was all about exploiting complementary harmonies through simultaneous contrast. A complementary harmony is generated with the juxtaposition of two opponent(complementary)colors. The  complementary standard refers to an orange vs. blue or, a red vs. green or, a yellow vs. violet pairing of complements.  In my first two examples I use the sunlit land vs. the shadowed water   to generate a complementary harmony as seen in my first example with the bright orange vs. the dark blue. Blue has been traditionally charged as a cool color just as the emotional charge to red, orange and yellow is heat.  These first two examples both use the  blue/orange complementary harmony. The second example  is a painting on copper. Its warm color comes from glazing the copper with gamboge and napthol red, two translucent colors. The complemenatry colors  here range from dark to light blue greens  set against  hot orange notes. The blue is more pronounced when it is converted into a tint by adding white. My next two examples represent analogous  harmony ( and a bit of a reduced complementary harmony). An analogous harmony uses adjacent colors  ( imagine colors that are adjacent on the color wheel) to create an attractive unity, a more serene unity is usually provided with  cool (blue to green) analogous harmonies.  Both paintings actually use a  diminished red brown/pale blue harmony. If I mix a blue (with white) with a brown I  create a neutral gray, a pewter tone. I separate these colors by allowing areas of the brown to be more pronounced and then, offer areas with the brown blended with the blue and white to achieve my neutral. I can flavor a neutral to be either warmer or cooler. In these more analogous  harmony paintings I use softer blended edges to generate a sense of thick atmosphere or, also motion if the blending occurs in a unitary direction. Here, I conjured  winter with  both a complementary harmony, with graphic  sharply delineated shapes and, analogous analogous harmony using more diffused and dissolved areas.