Color Massing II
November 20, 2014 § 5 Comments
Describing a breakthrough he had while struggling with a landscape painting, 19th century American painter, Albert Pinkham Ryder wrote, “…the old scene presented itself…and before my eyes , framed in an opening between two trees. It stood out like a painted canvas…three solid masses of form and color: sky, foliage, and earth. The whole was bathed in an atmosphere of golden luminosity. I threw my brushes aside; they were too small for the work at hand. I squeezed out big chunks of pure, moist color, and taking my palette knife, I laid on blue, green, white, and brown in great sweeping strokes. As I worked, I saw that it was good and clean and strong. I saw nature springing into life upon my dead canvas! Exultantly I painted until the sun sank below the horizon. Then I raced around the fields like a colt let loose and literally bellowed for joy!” *
A gallery of color massings from the centuries:
Painting OWU 
This could not have been more timely! I just finished a series of exercises on “retinal painting” (color massing by another name) with my color media class. I will share this with them today.
I would add Stuart Shils and Euan Uglow to this excellent list and Theo VanRhyllsburg whose early work is in this vein before he became an “optical mix” painter in the manner of Signac.
This is my favorit blog on the interweb!
That was excellent! thanks for putting it together.
cj healey
Thanks for your comments Chris and Constance. The hardest thing in compiling an album like this is leaving out a lot of great painters. Shils and Uglow are good suggestions. Maybe time for an update!
inspirational. thank you for posting.
Reblogged this on The Compendium and commented:
A brief article with images on the subject of color massing.