I never had any painting training and have recently found myself a willing pupil, learning of this new world of the what eye sees and how it can be painted. AWM has been working through an interesting artistic challenge, which he describes in his blog here:
Following this process and becoming fascinated by his obsession with creating a vivid and yellow "Lemon" was the inspiration for today's poem.
Colour Bias
This
problem, of a lemon –
After
fragile confidence in apples and pears,
Has
had you at first dismayed,
Then
challenged, then despondent.
(Though
I know victory will come).
How
strange, that though I have eyes
37
years in the observing,
I never
knew, under bias, my eyes had been rehearsing:
That
yellow, next to blue would look green,
That
sibling’d to red, orange tone stains would be seen
In
fruit, upwards, from what it so smugly sits on.
I’ve
seen the lemon. But never looked at it,
And
never witnessed the impact ‘Surrounding’ places
On
citrus, however humbly painted.
And
isn’t it the way, that we look a thousand times
But
never see, until we try to re-create, describe
Or
find a way of capturing a truth?
This
idea of Colour Bias:
Intellectually,
I can find it an intriguing conundrum:
As making
that Colour Wheel felt a new kind of science,
That
broadened my mind:
An “Oh, I see!” brain compliance,
But
moved on from, not held in mind,
Though
interesting, forgotten, without guidance.
Then
I learn of simultaneous contrast: of adjacent exposure
Stimulating
the opposite response in colour. That ‘Wheel’ lives
As a
subtle monster jumping into your paint, even if the green
Is
not strictly there.
And
finally, I understand successive contrast:
Where
the same colour can appear darker,
Or
even spread before the eye, next to its antipodeans suitor.
Because,
as you say “optical shit happens”;
And
the human eye, as the heart,
Never
operates in a computerised vacuum.
So,
somewhere inside the shod foot of cognitive confidence,
Something
stirs that has a restless, nagging prominence:
As a
veruca, that makes its pea-sized presence known
To
the princess mattress denial of my closed mind.
I
realise what I feel I should have always known,
Humbled
by my blindness, despite all the things that I have seen:
I
see that context is everything.
I realise this happens too, with words, mood, relationship.
Out
of the chair, and challenged; tiredness, headache
And
stoned by writing poetry,
I
found that red words lost me my mellowed yellow.
And after
the demanding succession
On
my ears all week, my words became a stiletto
To
tread on your fragile lemon.
Colour
bias resulted in a Hannah pious
And
unhelpful. And I am sorry.
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