Dr Franklyn: ‘ Yes, I think I know what you mean, I had a great love of chromatic blacks at one time when I was painting a lot – allied to the normal toning down of a primary with it’s opposite, like cooling off a red with a green. Loading a black with a lot of Cobolt or Ultramarine can make a stunning blue black or you can warm it up to a zingy violet black, it’s marvellous, but put in the wrong place it just looks like a plain old black or falls flat.
Me: ‘Yes, we’re really getting into the Harmonic areas now – you know how a Blue can sing against an Orange or Red, or vice versa as in primary contrasts ? - and produces involuntary afterimages and flickerings in the eye – well imagine if you could do that with Chromatic Blacks or Chromatic Whites.’
Dr Franklyn: ’That’s amazing – can you do it?’
Me: ‘The answer is yes – but here’s a funny thing Doc – It’s an old saw, but it goes back to what I was saying about simultaneous contrast and what you were just saying about putting chromatic black in the wrong place - context is everything and intention and unintention sits within it.’
Dr Franklyn: ‘ Most excellent, so in those cases when you’re painting - you must create the context itself for the thing to happen within it – as it were? – and If I could extrapolate further. You imply, that often you are not making a painting, or a picture as such – but providing the context for the unknown thing.?
Me: ‘ That’s pretty much correct Doc, and apart from the technical aspects,
the provision of context in a painting is for me, the state of the contract between minds. Ones own and the lookers - the painting and the audience …
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