Seeing Red

"Red Tablecloth"

20 x 20

(c) Lesley Powell

Recently I have been on a real rampage with the color red. I have always loved red, but have been somewhat fearful to feature it in my paintings, because it is notoriously difficult to work with. As painters would say, red is a "dark". It can be tricky to show contrast between red objects in light and red objects in shadow. For example, it can be hard to lighten red without having it turn pink or orange.

We can look to the great Renaissance masters for some truly inspiring work with red. Here is one of my favorites, an altarpiece by the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini:

My fascination with Bellini's reds led me to a little research. I learned that some of the beautiful reds used in the past were made from crushed bugs, specifically the cochineal beetle. These beetles were used centuries ago by ancient civilizations such as the Aztecs and the Phoenicians to create red pigments and dyes. In some cases, the insets were scratched from the twigs of trees with the fingernails. Ugh! Fortunately, we have it relatively easy nowadays, with pigments that we can simply squeeze from the tube. (Of course, just because we can obtain the basic hues from a tube doesn't mean that we would actually use the paint straight from the tube. Or that mixing the right red is easy). 

My recent adventure in red began with my apron, which hangs from a peg in my studio. The apron is certainly a more humble garment than those depicted by the Old Masters. For contrast, look what Titian, the master of color, did with the fabulous red robes of the Venetian Doges. Looking at these two images side by side is like going from the ridiculous to the sublime!

For anyone who is curious about such things, the two reds I use in my palette are cadmium red light and alizarin crimson (today's synthetic for Madder lake). For a comparison of the modern cadmium red paint to its historic precedent, vermilion, Margret Short has an excellent blog entry. And stay tuned for more work in the red family!

"Red Stripes and Spoon"

16 x 20