Colors of Time

This is a special post to wish my friend Ergun, and my wife Jan happy birthday.

A week ago, on a nice fall day, I revisited the junkyard in North Smithfield. It was still filled with dead cars which are piled 4-5 high at some places and gave the appearance as if nothing were moving. Quite the contrary, this time I saw as many, if not more, dead cars, but the clusters of cars have changed. Compared to my earlier visit on a hot summer day, it was a lot more comfortable this time, and I wandered slowly looking for patterns created by forces of time and nature, colors of time.

One of the finds was an International Harvester truck with colors as if the fall foliage has melted and dripped its colors on this old-timer. The other find was a trunk lid belonging to a much newer car, say 70’s, but time and nature had been equally merciless on it, creating beautiful patterns. It was remarkable to see the colors and patterns created, by time and nature, all around. As I said when I wrote the opening pieces of one of the Great Salt Lake folios, nature, using seemingly chaotic processes seem to create orderly patterns which are compositionally sound. Many a painter would love to be able to create artwork like those created by these forces.

The trunk lid patterns exemplify an interesting color concept called “simultaneous contrast” when opposite colors having similar luminosities are adjacent to each other, like yellow and blue or green and red. On the lid, orange-yellows against the faded blue intensify each color to be perceived more strongly than they actually are. If you stare at some of the patterns where the colors and luminosities are just right, you will feel your eye having difficulty resting on a single spot and jumping around as if the pattern of colors is vibrating.

Here is the collection featuring the colors of time.