One Colour a Day
I have to be honest and say that in the run up to Christmas, as is often the case, I was not feeling particularly festive, and in my suggestions or interests for the work secret santa this year I think I put some thing like “arty things” and then forgot about it. We have a diffuse team, so not all of us know each other very well, and the people I work closest with who have seen me sneakily looking at paints on the internet at work all emphatically deny it was them. But we work with a number of student staff, who are all undoubtably cooler and more aesthetic than me. Anyway, I digress…
I was given a copy of One Colour A Day – a Daily Art Practice and Visual Diary by Courtney Cerruti. The concept of this is very simple, it is a visual diary where each day one should make a colour, and name it, encouraging you to play with the media, and think about the connection to colour and emotion or events.
Now again, in my more disdainful past (and I have hinted at in my talk about Culture Hustle recently) even a couple of years ago I would have probably written this off as rather pretentious, but as someone who recently sat for a good hour exploring the diffusion and granuation properties of a sample of Paynes Grey this is actually one of the best presents I have ever been given!
Also, as someone whose neurodiversity can be characterised by the fact I went through a phase resulting in the acquisition of over 200 old cameras, or who has gone from one small Cotman box to 6 different palletes for different purposes in the space of a year, this bite-sized approach will hopefully encourange me to take some time out with purpose in my practice.
So here is week one.
I decided to start on 19th December 2023, which was my 50th Birthday. I got a lovely set of Cotman metallic watercolours so they have features, as did the aftermath of much pastis! There is obviously Christmas with glitter icing on the cake, and spiced beer in the pub. Toast and Honey is a chardonay we bought for Christmas, and the weather has been foul. There’s also an “extra” box which I will use for a pallate remnant each week, I think. These are currently all watercolours, but I think they will expand and encompass other media.
Suprisingly for me, I aim to avoid obsessively noting pigment infomation here, as I want the colours to speak for themselves. I think this is going to be lovely to look over at the end of the year.