REFRACTION
I had enormous difficulty in dealing with our latest
colour. In Africa
we are bombarded with colour. Wherever
you look it is there everywhere you look,
whether it be in our landscape from the bushveld, the semi-tropical coast in
Kwa-Zulu Natal, or the Cape
Winelands and everything
inbetween. Snow – sometimes in the
mountains but it does not stay long as the sun is sure to be evident within the
next day or so. Everywhere you go
whether it is to the markets with the array of the different peoples of our
land dressed in bright and vivid colour in the latest fashion, African prints,
or the beautiful Indian Sari’s. An
amazing vibrancy in sound and colour, and added to that, the spices in heaps
from Saffron to Red Hot Chilli.
Our light from an artist’s point of view is spectacular and
very different from the light in the Northern climes.
Thanks go to my son, the Engineer, who came up with this
idea for me, and from which comes the title of my piece.
The dictionary definition of a prism is that it is a solid
whose ends are similar, equal and parallel …. a triangular prism of glass or
the like for resolving “white” light into separate colours. This causes light of different colours to be
refracted differently and to leave the prism at different angles, creating an
effect similar to a rainbow. This can be
used to separate a beam of white light into its constituent spectrum of colour.
Therefore without the beam of white light I have used, the
colour would not be visible.
This is a different take on the colour we were given but I
had fun and it did allow me to use the seven colours of the rainbow to
illustrate this idea. After all we are
called “The Rainbow Nation”.
Ah ha - very clever. Funnily enough I was listening to the radio the other day about glass and they were talking about how it refracts light - and still I didn't make a connection. Love what you have done. Rainbow Nation indeed.
ReplyDeleteHilary
A very clever way around the White Dilemma, Patricia. You did something similar for your Grey challenge, too, using the neutral colour as a foil for all those bright umbrellas. Well done!
ReplyDeleteWhat a creative take on the challenge. I love your reference to the rainbow nation. Engineers can indeed be so helpful for our art - my husband is an engineer too and is always coming up with creative solutions to my technical problems in the studio.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree about the Enginers, sometimes his ideas are too weird to be able to transpose into art, but I did a piece about a year ago when I needed lines to go in an exact direction to give me the correct perspective and he made it work and look so easy.
DeleteVery clever. Great way around the colour challange.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun interpretation and very cleverly executed - definitely worth taking a close look at the detail. This definitely defies the theory that art quilters can't do points!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea. One of my early thoughts was how to creep lots of colour onto a white base and you've done it perfectly. Will this go to the Festival of Quilts next month?
ReplyDeleteWhat an idea and you carried it out so well. Glad I'm not married to an engineer to make these challenges even more challenging.
ReplyDeletebeautiful interpretation patricia
ReplyDeleteso well executed
As an (ex) physicist, I can really appreciate this piece. I like the way you've coloured in the colours within the prism, it gives them a softer quality that really works. Love the way we all interpretate the challenges differently.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea and it's beautifully done.
ReplyDelete