"All chatter is misunderstanding. Insight is only within the work." ~ Rilke

This is a love letter to the color blue. Almost blue.

I paint to evoke emotions, more than words. Emotions in myself and in those who interact with my art. Whether it’s a brief encounter when people scroll their social media or an art show or a longer commitment when my art truly speaks to someone and they buy it. I choose specific colors, something that is both mysterious and joyful, something that is both present and future as the colors may change day by day depending on the sunlight.

I haven’t thought much about how a poet would talk about my paintings. Until now. Until I came across a short book “Letters on Cezanne” which is really a collection of letters that Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to his wife Clara Westhoff in 1907. Rilke was fascinated by Cezanne’s paintings, his use of colors and considered Cezanne to be one of his most formative influences on his poetry. He was 31 at the time, living in Paris and visiting the Autumn Salon with several rooms of Cezanne’s paintings.

“There is something else I wanted to say about Cezanne: that no one before him ever demonstrated so clearly the extent to which the painting is something that takes place among the colors, and how one has to leave them completely alone so that they can come to terms among themselves.”

“Nocturne” 30”x48”acrylic on canvas

As you read through Rilke’s descriptions of colors, there are no less than 16 different types of blue, and more violets and greens… In one of the letters Rilke even speaks about the possibility of writing a monograph on the color blue. His descriptions of the color blue are truly stunning:

Bourgeois cotton blue, airy blue, listening blue, heavy dark blue, thunderstorm blue, juicy blue, cobalt blue pattern, greenish blue, blue gray, ‘blue, greenly scintillating’, wet dark blue, ‘an ocean of cold, too remotely blissful barely blue’, opaque bluish white, light floating lilac, heavy violet of Finnish granite, moist violet brown, hermetic blue, completely supportless blue, dense quilted blue, ancient Egyptian shadow-blue, violet silk (a violet as vehemently moist as if it were the complementary color of the sun)…

My “almost blues”

All these conversations about color blue made me take a closer look at my own blue paintings. Because until somewhat recently, I was both very ignorant and enchanted of the color blue. I didn’t realize I used a lot of blue in my painting until a close friend wanted to buy a blue painting from me. And then suddenly, almost every painting had different shades of blue. As if I went from no seeing blue to seeing it everywhere. I noticed songs with “blue” in the titles, I noticed books about color blue. Blue is now everywhere for me. So much that I’m in deep rabbit hole of curating my own “almost blue” art story. Unbeknownst to me, when I look back, most of my sold paintings are blue.

I still have a somewhat mythical and complicated relationship with the color blue. When I was choosing which paintings to take for my “Ode to Joy” exhibit last year, I subconsciously judged my blue paintings as not being joyful enough. And I had to turn to my own advice and tagline of the exhibit: “Seek Joy in every season” to “Seek Joy in every color”, to “Seek Joy in every Emotion”. Because just like nature, our life and colors in it have seasons.

My journey and relationship with color blue will continue, and I’ll be sharing more of it in later posts.

You can see some of my current ‘almost blue’ paintings here:

Thank you for your presence here and being a witness to my creative journey 🌸

with ‘almost blue’ love,

Diana

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p.s. Is there a color that you have a special relationship with?