Blog Post BLUE SKIES AHEAD...
What is it about blue and white that we love so much? It’s undoubtably an enduring combination - from Ming vases, to Delftware and Spode it has forever been a favourite colour scheme in ceramics - and in interiors ticking, toile de jouy and indigo dyed fabrics remain in the look books year after year.
Historically blue as a pigment has gone from scarce (only used for the Madonna’s robes in early Renaissance paintings) and expensive (Vermeer is said to have near bankrupted his family to satisfy his obsession for enough lapis lazuli pigment to paint the Girl with a Pearl Earring) to then being available in abundance as synthetic forms of blue appeared - and there was even the most blue of all blues developed by Yves Klein in the 1950’s. Socially blue is used in pageantry, flags and logos to imply power, peace and unity - Prussian blue, navy blue and UN blue come to mind.
In popular sayings there is the dichotomy of ‘feeling blue’ whilst feelings of hope and optimism are conjured by ‘blue skies ahead’. I prefer to focus on the optimism...does the blue and white combination take us to happier places where the sea meets the sky, where clouds drift across blue horizons leading us into spaces of calm and escape? I think it does. The colour duo, whether a pale blue sky with dove white clouds, or a vibrant ultramarine sky against a brilliant whitewashed building, lifts our spirits particularly when we take the time to notice it and breathe it in. You might not be surprised to know that every room in my house has blue in it, my china is predominantly blue and white (a wondrously mismatched collection of junk shop Spode, Habitat ‘blot', moroccan earthenware and numerous other finds unified by colour scheme only) and that I have a growing collection of artwork by other artists on the theme of skies and horizons. Oh, and as I type my nails are blue, too!
Dappled Light Series - Willow in the river gleam Cyanotype, Gesso, Acrylic and gold pigment on canvas 90 × 90 cm