Exhibition | Colin Page: Everything in its Place

A SHARED TABLE

"To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions." - Robert Irwin

Love of shared time can be seen in the chaos of a family dining table. Their tops swirl and swell with the things that make up our days - flowers, games, crafts, books, snacks, and color. Everything in its place. It is around these strewn tables that easy but meaningful conversations happen. 

How Perfectly by Mary Oliver

How perfectly and neatly opens the pink rose
This bright morning, the sun warm on my shoulders,
Its heat on the opening petals.
Possibly it is the smallest, the least important event at this moment
in the whole world.
Yet I stand there, utterly happy.

Seen from above across a shallow space, we are off balance, lifted by the perspective and fullness of the scene. The sensation is a match for the time they depict, quarantine, the family table full of the activities that kept us moving forward in an uncertain time. A messy tabletop is proof of life lived together.

COLORATURA

"With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft." - Matisse

In opera, coloratura is an elaborate ornamentation of a vocal melody, especially in operatic singing by a soprano. The musical idea fits the way color builds in a painting. A dominant color will be embellished with harmonious or exciting colors to describe some of the complexity of how we see. Once in a while, a simple object will become more important purely for the way its color vibrates next to its neighbor. 

Certain strong colors grab the viewer and demand to be looked at. This makes the eye look for its sibling color notes, moving the eye around, dancing through the scene. The repetition of these colors can feel like an anchor, steadying and reassuring  in the midst of the movement and rhythm of the painting.