White’s never white…
Hannah Harvester 2023, “The white house in April,” soft pastel on sanded paper, 9x12”, $400.We see things we know are white as… white. It’s one of those things about the brain creating shortcuts. I know the white houses on the street are white, and I see them as white houses. But when you go to paint them…
That’s when you realize that white is never really white.
It’s blue and green and yellow and anything but white. When you slow down to paint, and have to put down a color that looks right, you quickly learn that putting down white usually looks wrong if you want something to look…white. Right?
Why is this? Well, it’s light and shadow, and is the light pure sunlight or filtered through clouds or leaves and is there reflection from the the ground or a tree or the sky and what’s the angle of the light, and what time of day is it? Plus there are the variations in the “local” color of the white thing to begin with, meaning the actual composition of the white paint if it’s a house, and whether it’s a cool (blue-leaning) or warm (yellow-leaning) paint…
It’s fun—even if you’re not a painter, try looking at a white house on your street every time you pass by, and ask yourself, what color is the sunlit side of the building, if it’s not white? What about the shadow side? Don’t cheat by saying “gray”—a gray is always a blue-gray or a purple-gray or a green-gray…you get the picture.
This is one of the reasons I love painting and being alive and seeing in color (we humans are lucky we see the color spectrum we do…it’s all about evolution, and it could’ve been different, but we got this glorious color vision, and damn am I grateful!). P.S. The white is never really white thing is also a metaphor, but you already knew that.
This painting is available for purchase! Click here to check it out.