The interaction of strong and soft colors is my interest in these paintings. The colors are taken from the rainbow. Sunlight causes refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in raindrops to create the rainbow. Red is always on the top of the bow with orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet completing the arc. I have superimposed two rainbows. The closer, dominant strong colored rainbow hovers above the distant and soft colored rainbow...emphatic foreground over a gentle background.
I made a white cardboard model of a transparent cube. On the sides of this model were arranged spaced horizontal and diagonal bars. In the interior of the model were spaced vertical bars. Each large painting is a head on corner view of the model. All elements of the model, with a broad face to the left, receive full light while those with a broad face to the right, are in shadow. These elements are three dimensional, showing both bright light and shadow. This explains the two colors associated with each bar. The model permits through views of the subdued background.
The small paintings are an enlargement of the center of each large painting. This allows a closer study of the color variations and their influence on each other. Notice that the background colors on the left are darker than those on the right. The left background receives raking, glancing light, while the background on the right receives direct, full light. The number of colors in each painting hovers just above twenty. All colors are generated from the six rainbow colors for these paintings.
Malcolm Montague Davis
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