Muted Colors Are Still Colors!

Little Shoulders All In A Row. Oil, collage and cold wax on board, 50cm x 40cm. Anne Kearney

I was recently listening to John Dalton interview an artist who paints wonderfully expressive and vivid portraits. When asked about her color palette, she replied that her choices reflect her love of color. Many artists talk about their work in the same way, but what does a “love a color” really mean?

When people say, “I love color,” or when artists say, “Color is important to my work,” they often mean that they love bright saturated hues. They might also mean that particular saturated hues or combinations of hues hold meaning for them. But does this mean that those of us who choose a muted palette cannot also claim to love color? That often seems to be the assumption.

One artist looked at some pieces from my recent body of work, done in a very muted color palette, and remarked that for her color was very important. The implication was that color was not important to me or my work. This annoyed me. I too love color. I too consider it an important part of my work.

How can that be when my palette is so muted? It all depends on how you define color.

Color studies. Anne Kearney

What’s in a color?

Color is so much more than a saturated hue. Imagine every hue (every color on the color wheel and all the ones in-between), then think about every saturation level of those hues (from the most vivid to the most greyed down version), and then add in every value of each hue-saturation permutation (from the darkest dark to the lightest light). This thought experiment yields a practically infinite number of hue-saturation-value combinations, each one of which is just as much a “color” as the next.

Muted color are colors – they just occupy a different point on the hue- saturation-value spectrum. Chromatic greys are colors –their saturation is very low but they still lean warm or cool, blue or yellow or red or anywhere in-between. White is a color. And even though black is not technically a color when talking about light, black paint is a color (there are actually many different colors of black).

Your love of chromatic greys may be just as strong as someone else’s love of saturated colors. And your use of black or white or a muted earthy pink may be just as important to your work as saturated turquoise is to someone else’s.

Box Crib. Oil, collage and cold wax on paper, 55cm x 36cm. Anne Kearney

Why so muted?

For me, the choice of color palette for a particular piece or body of work depends on what I’m trying to communicate. My most recent body of work is about the back and forth between people and their environments. It’s about how our identities shift in response to where we live and the people who come in and out of our lives. It’s about how our environments can hold us up but how they can also hold us back. It’s about change and struggle that can be slow and even imperceptible.

I chose a very muted color palette for this work because I felt that these colors support the story that I’m trying to tell. I was inspired by the colors at construction sites – the muted colors of earth and building materials with a bit of color from construction cones or plastic sheeting. For me, this muted palette represents a force that is subtle, powerful, and slow. I use the occasional pop of somewhat more saturated hues against larger areas of chromatic greys in order to draw the eye, connote life or importance, and also simply because the combination gives me so much pleasure.

My choice of color palette in these works was as important to me as my other choices – like my choice to emphasize texture and to weave together figure and ground. And getting the colors in a particular piece to work well together – for example, selecting the right chromatic grey for a background – was at times more difficult for me than it is when I’m working with saturated hues.

My next body of work focuses on a different idea and will probably contain more saturated color, although I have yet to see how that will play out. That said, I doubt I will ever veer too far toward the prismatic. My happy place is among colors that are at least somewhat muted.

I recently gave a studio tour and a student noted that my color palette was very muted and asked me if that was intentional. If she only knew how much I think about these things! I am the first to admit that I sometimes overthink. The time I spend with my ideas before and during a painting is both a drawback and a superpower. It can make my work painfully slow and tip me into overthinking. On the other hand, I have been told that it gives my work depth and invites discovery. Ultimately, this invitation to think and discover is what I’m trying to create through my work and I will use whatever colors I think I need to help me out. Why? Because I love color!

What’s your approach to color?