Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Feeling Color - Feeling Red

Feeling Color - Feeling Red

 
The Birth. oil on linen. 48 x 82 inches. 2003. Price: $8000
 

Robin Lynch worked in my gallery as part of her undergraduate internship. It was really a pleasure. Robin shared her incredible dance about love, passion, pain, naked soul, venerability, obsession, lose... She started the dance all in white. Clean. Innocent, Pure. She place a few liters of red tempera paint in a bowl. Robin proceeded to obsessively, tenderly explore her emotions in Red.


After that night I would ask Robin, “What color was she feeling today?”


As a painter her dance in Red helped me develop my relationship to color. In emails we would ask each other what color we were feeling on a particular day.

I am a pretty intense individual. These brief conversations rotated in my mind like a song on repeat. Day dreams. Visions. My dreams became more vivid. I would have waves of blue, wind of white, rays of yellow, falling shades of green in the night.

Sleeping, dreaming, inside my head, in my bed. The large window in my bedroom has no curtains. My bedroom is on the third floor and East facing. In the morning my window is open. I hear the morning start. I hear the birds welcome the break of day. The blue, black dark night dissolves. A spectrum of colors filter into my room. My eyes open the door to my soul. I inhale the palette of light.


My mind paints each color. I focus on where each color settles inside my body. Where is each ray of light marinates in my muscles of my mind and body. I would try to feel white in my mind. Bleach my mind. Mother's milk calming my cortex. Red in my heart. A fire. Warm source of inner heat and passion. The read has a contagious energy. A flame. It would dominate my inner being. It is not uncommon that I would feel like a tree on fire.... burning red. My house would go up in flames of red. It was been difficult to not be over powered and have red completely take over my mind, my heart, my palette, my paintings would be flooded in blood flood waves of red.

My relationship with red is most primary. Each color has a particular significance. And over the past many years I have spent much time thinking about each color and how and why I paint with each pigment.


A special thank you to Robin for inspiring me.

 
Live Love Art
Patrick John Mills
 
 
Heat Beat. oil on canvas. 48 x 72 inches. Summer - Winter 2012. Price: $3800.
 
 
Sunset Soul. Oil on canvas. 48 x 72 inches. 2013. Price: $3600