In these paintings yellow reigns. It’s an intense, even demanding colour: requiring immersion, or at least an energised response from the viewer. It’s only one step from its association with light to joy, vigour and celebration. This curation of yellow seeks to show it’s not an intimidating colour to work with but rather, like any colour, it can move through endless applications.
There are other ways the colour is employed here: with the flat theatricality of a stage set as the background in David Rae’s ‘Shooting Target 2’; with tenderness in Julia Blackshaw’s portrait ‘You are my Sunshine’; for the unified energy of dancer and her environment in Artemis Louka’s painting; for abstract surge by Laura Menzies. In Natalie Chapman’s portrait, ‘If Only I Were Enough’, the colours are a counterargument to the title’s self-deprecation, radiating resilience and vitality, crossed with oranges and greens: the artist’s tonal risks have paid off.
You can tell a history of art through a material history of colour. One of the oldest paint pigments, yellow ochre, was used by the ancient Egyptians to paint the skin tones on their murals – and it’s a colour still popular with artists today, due to its opaque quality and ability to harmonise with other colours. It’s still often used for flesh tones, as well as for landscapes. Another pigment obtained from minerals long before the industrial age was the Naples yellow (from lead antimonate, making it toxic) used on ceramics.
The Babylonians used Naples yellow (lead antimonate) on ceramics. From the 8th century, gamboge (once made from arsenic sulphide) was used in China to illuminate manuscripts – obtained from an amber-like substance harvested from trees. It’s also a traditional colour used to dye Buddhist monks’ robes, particular Theravada Buddhists.
The myth behind India yellow that replaced gamboge as a glazing colour in the mid-19th century, tells that it was made from the bladder stones of cows fed on mango leaves. With the 19th century also came the creation of modern mineral pigments such as chrome yellow (lead chromate), which was used by Vincent Van Gogh and George Seurat. Impressionism was enabled by the developments in paint chemistry, which created brighter, more stable colours for oil painting the first time. As it turned out, the true chrome level is toxic and dissolves rapidly, a fact not known at the time. Van Gogh used it on his paintings – for sunflowers, fields and interiors. There’s now an ongoing project of excavating his paintings using laser technology to discover the history of this particular pigment, how it ages and reacts with sunlight.
The story of yellow also continues in the contemporary works collected here; as ever, if you’re drawn to any one of them or would like to find out more about the artist, get in touch with us to talk art!
Words by Maggie
