Yesterday afternoon I was relaxing inside a swimming pool. The inviting light blue colour of the water is always a comfort to me (or hopefully to all of us). I think we associate a swimming pool with chlorine and cleanliness and when we are inside the water, we are comforted by the knowledge that we are indeed in a safe environment. One boy was wearing swimming trunks that were dark blue at the knees and the colour gradually changed to a turquoise when it reached his waist. The blue variations on the swimming trunks made me think of the abstract oil paintings I made ten years ago; I could appreciate those turquoise tones tremendously. (I have a little problem now, because I do not think I will be able to re-mix those turquoise colours so easily, if I had to.)
Water itself is one of the vital substances of life as we all know. I have not really tried to portray water in realistic artworks, simply because I hail from a desert area and there are no rivers or beaches near us. I have seen magnificent works of big waves with the light shining through the water and I marveled at the perfection the artist was presenting. The closest I came to painting water, as I hinted above, was when I referred to water in the titles of my work, simply because those watercolour tones were present in my works; I took a short cut.
Let me deviate for a second. I have an outspoken French friend who is against the colour blue. I hope he will approve of the turquoise. Whenever I meet him and I show him a few photographs of my recent works he easily protests when he sees too much blue somewhere. As an artist I cannot understand what triggered his disgust when he regards the blue hue; maybe it leaves him cold? (Tongue in cheek.) I have not yet met a person who dislikes turquoise. It may not be the easiest colour to use on a large scale or inside an interior, but it may keep us cool as we think of swimming pool and tropical islands.
On a deeper note, someone told me one day of a book she read which described the lives of a multiracial family. One day one of the children asked the mother, what colour God was and the mother replied, “He is the colour of water”. That beautiful sentence has stayed with me.
These two works that I have included here today were both done on board and I used the window cleaning device, the popular squeezy, to create the wave effects. I discovered that one needs a harder surface, like board or canvas stuck on board, if you want to scrape into the paint. The diptych I called “Aqua” and the square work, “Water music”. I trust that my references to swimming pools and turquoise waters made you pour yourself a glass of life-giving water. Drink your eight glasses a day and let us not waste water or pollute it with our masks and gloves.
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