About Me

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I am a studio artist and textile designer. My work swirls around among art, design, and the joy of making things. I founded LFN Textiles Artists Ribbons in 2002, and have been designing these fairly wonderful ribbons for 8 years now. They are distributed for the wholesale market exclusively by Renaissance Ribbons, and are available at retail on my website, www.lfntextiles.com, and nationwide through fine fabric stores, gift shops. My tapestries are available through a number of galleries across the country as well. See the links section for contact information.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

what we talk about when we talk about color

I live and breathe color, in my work and in my life.  I have frequently spoken of it here.  I have a sophisticated eye, if I say so myself, close to perfect pitch in the visual sense.  I never took a color class, which is not to brag, but it has hurt me in that I have never, as a result, known how I would teach one!

For me color is about observation, but it is like scent: it runs a straight path past the right brain and goes straight into a nameless sense of joy (or pain) when it hits a nerve.  It is possible to analyze why this could happen, but to quantify it into a teachable lesson seems similar to teaching you how to choose your next lover based on a logical system.

I have biases: I like a certain amount of complementary challenge in my palettes.  I am bored by most monotones, prefer a triad of colors at the least.  I much prefer layered color rather than flat, and the yellow ink runs out in my printer at twice the rate of the other toners, meaningthat I prefer a warm palette.  I think ideally a palette should include, in some form, a variation of all 3 primaries.

When my daughter Rose used to pester me about what my favorite color might be, I would answer (poor girl!) that it was impossible to have a favorite color, much like it is impossible to have a favorite child.  Taken on their own, there are hues I like more and hues I like less, but color is never isolated, and a color I might love can become an eyesore used i n the wrong context.

design for a rug, (c) 2011 Laura Foster Nicholson
I think, were I to teach a color class, the first exercise I would conduct would be to have each student identify a color they loathed, and make them work with it, in palettes, until they found a perfect home for it.  A shadow? a complement?  although I have waxed emotional about color, it is profoundly a tool: one can't afford to have either favorites or avoid colors one tends to dislike.