colour richness plentitude

After some crude and irreverent posting that seemed to come out of nowhere last month,  I am back to my all too serious and sincere ways as a reactionary wet blanket who hates everything fun except sitting in a cave in my hair shirt with my cat-o-nine-tails.

Anyway, I’m still slogging through the book on colour each day as I am transported to my cubicle in order to stare at 22 massive inches of LEDs for 8 vacuous hours, because God forbid I should read some fiction or the “devil’s literature” graphic novels, or AM New York, or the Metro like a normal person. This morning I was reading a piece by Maurice Denis on Cezanne from which I draw today’s quote:

‘There is no such thing as line,’ he said, ‘no such thing as modelling, there are only contrasts. When colour attains its richness form attains its plentitude.’

Thus, in his essentially concrete perception of objects, form is not separated from colour; they condition one another, they are indissolubly united. And in consequence in his execution he wishes to realize them as he sees them, by a single brush-stroke.

I don’t have the answers or magic wand of understanding, but this strikes me as something interesting to think about as I approach my own paintings, especially this idea of form is not separated from colour. It’s almost straight out of the Heart Sutra and seems like a very zen approach to these painting issues, if I can say that.