Page 60 - Vol. VI #3

On Color (continued from preceding page)
He’d written home about the aspens in the moun- Golden light. Avocado green. Green eyes. Blue. tains turning such bright colors that they were Hazel. Brown. Skin pigments: red, yellow, tan, mistaken for forest fires. My mother ohh’ed and brown, white (pink), and shades thereof. The ahh’d at the spectacular sunsets from Fort Col- rainbow coalition. The rainbow connection. lins, while I busily took color slides, though they
could never suggest the full beauty: the immen- sity of space, the eastern hemisphere of dark, then twilight closing overhead while perhaps a third of the sky remained bright over the moun- tains, yet softened, the sinking sun burned and the horizon was streaked with reds, oranges, turquoise, and lavender, with deeper purple in the clouds.
Do we over-privilege the vivid, I wonder, as we do the loud, spicy, strong, and pungent? The Pantone book boasts 1,865 values and shades: an orches- tra, a symphony! We are the nexus of our senses, dwelling in the world and—thanks to NASA’s
Years before, near home back East, she’d been painting a covered bridge while I played with stones on a sandbar. When she exclaimed of another sunset: “No one would believe a sky like that even if I could paint it; it doesn’t matter if it’s true, no one would believe it.” I think now both of the pretend statue in The Winter’s Tale: “O, she’s warm! / If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating,” and Johnson’s dictum, “Imitations are not to be mistaken for reality, but to bring reality to mind.”
Fireworks, the burst and bloom of colored sparks fill the sky.
Green vegetables: beans, celery, broccoli, and let- tuce. Yellow corn, squash, pears, lemons, grape- fruits, and bananas. Orange pumpkins, carrots, and oranges. Peppers and apples both in red, yellow, and green. Potatoes tan. Supposedly the produce displays in supermarkets need ”high color definition lamps,” according to one manu- facturer. “Strawberries and radishes tend to look dull, leafy lettuce wilts, bananas and oranges go soft and mushy and cauliflower turns yellow un- der common supermarket lighting.”
Caught red-handed (think of Macbeth’s bloody hands, which would “Incarnadine” the sea). Red- faced with shame. Green with envy. Greenhorn. True blue. Blue in the face. In the pink. Yellow livered. Feeling blue. The mean reds. White as a ghost. Fiery red ( blue flame is hottest, of course, yellow least). Red hot. Sky blue. Canary yellow.
51
Weights and Measures
cold wax and oil baltic birch panel 4' x 6' By Pamela Caughey'