Artistic color theory the modern phrenology? #1: absolute meanings
May 29th, 2007 by Brad
Since we are taught in art school the colors are universal and have fundamental harmonies. Let’s start with a test of universality. Match on color to one thing, some things don’t have color matches:
- colors:
- yellow
- green
- red
- white
- blue
things:
- sun
- plants
- earth
- water
- fire
- cloud
- sky
Should be pretty easy. But most westerners almost certainly made two fundamental mistakes. While traveling in Ladakh, a Buddhist region in the Indian Himalayas, I visited many Gompa’s and Monasteries which have many prayer flags (similar to Tibetan traditions). In Ladakh, the colors have the following meanings (yellow:earth, green:water, red:fire, white:cloud,blue:sky). Makes sense the barren mountains are pretty yellow in color and of course water will make things green, and also some of the rivers due to mineral content look a bit green.
So that bump on your head really means what? In my case that bump meant
I was in another low-clearance country with beams placed a bit to low
from my 6′ frame.
Yes, travel informs my art.
