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Psychology of Colour – Green

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Oasis, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

Green symbolises life, fertility and resurrection.  Green is calming.  The colour can help put people at ease in a new place.

God said, “Let the earth grow green with vegetation, plants yielding seed and trees bearing fruit, each according to its kind.” And it was so.  The earth turned green with vegetation, plants yielded seeds and trees bore fruit, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning; it was the third day.  Genesis 1:11-13

Lake Wood, Northumberland, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

Space and interior designers often use green plants and green colours in public spaces, restaurants and hotels.

Buildeo is an interior design company with clients that include Holiday Inn, Hilton and Formby Hall Golf Resort.  Their advice for hotel lobby colours is green colour based.

Customers will feel connected to nature with green.  The addition of a fountain, waterfall and unusual green plants evoke a sense of peace and tranquillity in a space.

Thames Sluice, Henley-on-Thames, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

The awards that have been given at the Chelsea Flower Show this year have themes of water and green plants – particularly the ‘Ecotherapy Garden’ .

Yellow and reds (see past blogs) generate feelings of stimulation.  Red and yellow is attention grabbing, can stimulate hunger and motivate speed.  Not surprising that KFC, McDonalds and Burger King use the yellow and red pallet.

Green has many layers to it and a rich history.  Mixing blue and yellow produces green.  The word for green and blue in some languages is the same!

Ancient Egypt associates green with regeneration and rebirth.  Ancient Egyptian artists ground malachite for green pigment.  Malachite is a copper mineral and stalagmites and stalactites that are green have copper deposits mixed with the calcium carbonate.

Malachite was used by the Ancient Egyptians for tomb decoration, but this fell out of use over time as it oxidised and went black over time.

Ancient Romans use copper to make green pigment.  This was achieved by soaking copper plates in wine which made Verdigris – the colour found as patina on old metal.

Place de la Republique, Lille, France, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

Verdigris was used for mosaics and painting.  This technique for green production was used through the medieval period where monks would use this pigment to paint scenes in illuminated manuscripts.

During the Renaissance, plants began to be used to make paint.  However, the pigment from plants faded quickly.

Green is often associated with the Islamic religion, but this idea was only developed in the 12th Century.  In the Quran green is mentioned eight times, always in a positive sense, as a colour of vegetation, spring and paradise.

Michel Pastoureau, described as a ‘historian born in colour’, and a master of medieval images, symbols and colour has written about this.  He believes that in the 1100s green came to be seen as a unifying colour for the muslims.  Green became the sacred colour. That is why many copies of the Quran from the Middle Ages had green bindings, as they do today.

Michel Pastoureau has written a full book titled ‘Green – The History of a Colour – translated from the French by Jody Gladding.

Similarly, a great number of religious dignitaries wear green clothing. Muslims believe green is a “symbolism associated with paradise, happiness, riches, water, the sky and hope”.

In 1775 the Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele made green pigment with arsenite, a chemical compound of arsenic.  This was as deadly as it was vibrant.  The colour was used for curtains, art, clothing and toys.  It sickened people for decades and is thought to be a contributory factor in Napoleon’s death.  The wallpaper in the room where he was exiled contained Scheele’s green.

More positively, green is restful, soothing, cheerful and health giving.  Green is thought to relieve stress and help heal.  Those who have a green work environment experience fewer stomach aches.

Green landscape photography, available in different sizes, can have a positive impact upon a room.  Please call me with any questions with reference to images that may help the professional space within which you work.

Landscape, Goudhurst, Kent, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

Green is the colour of balance and harmony and can, therefore, be helpful in times of stress.

So many of us are exposed to the glare of electronic screens on a daily basis. Prolonged use of computers have been noted as having an aggravating impact on tinnitus.

If you expose yourself to green environments, research suggests this can lower blood pressure and heart rate.  If you click on this text area, you will see evidence that green stimulates recovery and relaxation and has a positive impact upon mental health.

Sulhampstead Cattle Bridge, Kennet Canal, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

Colour-chakra theory from Hindu scriptures adds green; strengthens bones and muscles, disinfects bacteria and virus, and relieves tension; used to treat malaria, back problems and blood pressure.

Goldstein asserts “under the influence of green (as with blue) light, time is likely to be underestimated.”  “Also, weights will be judged lighter.”

Theale Lagoon, Theale, Art Photograph, Hugo Richardson

Negative associations:

Boredom, stagnation, envy, blandness, enervation, sickness

 Positive Associations : (source: Envato Pty. Ltd.)

Health, hope, freshness, nature, growth, prosperity

hugo.richardson@image-memory.com

Tel.: 07476 343 777

Next week in the Psychology of Colour series – Pink

J M W Turner and the Elements – Fire

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Prometheus gave humanity fire

A Lime Kiln by Moonlight, J M W Turner, 1799

I am delighted to present the third of the ‘blogs’ relating to JMW Turner and my attempts to follow his methodology with my photographic work. Turner’s approach to art involved drama, action and bright light.

For example, we already know that his marine paintings included stormy events, ports defying the sea and ships capsizing.

The English Romantic painter, was lucky in a number of ways.  Britain was enjoying the developments associated with British invention.  Also, we had success in remaining independent from invasion attempts, following our success at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

We were also making significant strides with science.  For example, Humphry Davy, born in Cornwall, invented the Davy Lamp. This ‘arc lamp’ was one of the first electric lights. Bessemer was patenting a process for smelting steel. George and his son Robert’s company, Robert Stephenson and Company, manufactured and released the Locomotion No. 1, which was the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line in 1825.

Light Bulb, photo taken by Hugo Richardson

Abstract Light Art, photograph by Hugo Richardson

Fire was being used industrially for manufacturing and for generating steam. One of Turner’s most famous paintings, depicting the move from sail to steam with marine transportation, shows how innovation was having an impact:

The Fighting Temerair, J M W Turner, 1838

The Eruption of the Souffrier Mountains, JMW Turner 1815

Turner was also interested in Geology, which led to a great demand for paintings of volcanoes.

At the start of the 1770s, an international group of artists gathered around the volcanologist William Hamilton (1731-1803), who resided as the British ambassador at the court of Naples at the foot of Mount Vesuvius.

Please see my ‘fireworks’ image below, inspired by Turner’s work:

Fireworks, Reading, Berkshire – photo taken by Hugo Richardson

The painters in his circle strove for realistic depictions of nature; they were interested in scientific inquiry and participated in the debate between the Plutonists and the Neptunists.

‘Neptunists’ believed that all rocks, including granite and basalt were formed by crystallization of material from the early earth’s oceans.

‘Plutonists’ believed that the rocks of the earth were formed through volcanic and magnetic action.

Crimson Sunset, J M W Turner, 1825

Moreover, the aesthetic qualities of fiery sunsets were always worthy visual material.

Sunset over Wiltshire Landscape, photo by Hugo Richardson

Turner arrived at a concept of landscape painting in which fire was not only used to create decorative affects, like those in the works of his contemporaries, but also became an integral part of his understanding of nature.

Firelight and lamplight were often subjects that Turner chose for his art.  This next piece of art focuses upon a fireplace in a bedroom.

A Bedroom with a Fire Burning, and a Bed with Yellow Curtains, JMW Turner 1827

Please see an interior photograph that focuses upon a living room stove, after Turner’s work of art above.

Stove Fireplace with a Round Candelabra for diffuse Light, photograph by Hugo Richardson

Glow of Bonfire, Art Photograph by Hugo Richardson

Next week Turner and The Elements – Earth

Local scenes of Reading, now on sale at Reading Museum

JWM Turner – The Elements – Air

/ Hugo Richardson / 4 Comments

‘The Service of the Clouds’

   

Entrance of the Meuse, JWM Turner, Orange Merchant Ship on the bar, 1819

The approach that English painters had for landscape painting, at the beginning of Turner’s career, included the ‘aerial perspective’ (used predominantly by Dutch artists in the 15th Century)

This system was a formula for producing atmospheric effect.  The process was used for ensuring uniformity in a painting.

Distant objects were depicted as paler and bluer; those in the middle distance were green and objects in the foreground were brown.

The farther away the object the less detailed it became.

However, in the second half of the eighteenth century, English painters felt that aerial perspective’s inflexible colour scheme was imperfect.

They realised that the appearance of objects in the landscape depended on light, the movement of clouds and weather conditions.

Artists like Turner, John R Cozens, Thomas Girtin and Francis Towne changed their styles to allow for this.

Their choice of colours and brushstrokes captured the impression of a fleeting, transient moment.

This changeability in nature focused on the style that John Ruskin (1819-1900) called “service of the clouds.”

Turner was particularly adept at painting the sky, light and vapour – air.

The element of air played the most important role in Ruskin’s assessment of the innovations Turner contributed to painting.

According to Ruskin, Turner’s depictions of space were based on atmospheric transparency.

This achieved a more truthful representation of nature and was a part of the scientific foundation of art promoted not only by Ruskin, but also Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).

Turner’s work had vibrance to it, more closely showing the action of seeing through the sky rather than looking at it.

This is the effect that I am also trying to achieve with my photography.   The camera never lies, but using light, cloud, water vapour and reflection can add a depth to two-dimensions.

Watchers of the skies, through observing what is happening above us, can also have other meanings…

Clearly, from a biblical perspective, the heavens, the skies above, are also important for contemplative moods.  It is said that sitting on a beach for a few days a year, during a vacation is an important act for renewal.

The New Moon; or “I’ve lost My Boat, You shan’t have Your Hoop.” Turner 1840

Where the sea meets the sky is the furthest point that we can ever see, distance wise, with the eyes.  Most work is close up, much of it nowadays screen-based. So having the opportunity to rest the eyes, mind and soul by quietly watching the sun retreat over the horizon, whilst listening to the breathing of the sea waves, can be cathartic.

Perhaps I like Turner’s work because of the reminiscences it invokes of past holidays.

Either way, the sky is never the same from one day to the next, so it always delivers a new perspective.

In 1819, Turner visited Italy.  He was impressed by the intensity of light there.  In Rome, Turner encountered the method of painting in oils directly from nature, which derived from Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819) and his international academy of plein-air painting from the 1770s and 1780s.

During extensive rambles through the Roman Campagna, open-air painters became aware of how important the sky was to achieving a uniform effect in painting.

Clearly, being in the open air, outdoors is also a weekend pursuit many of us look forward to at the weekends.

Sources of research: Turner and the Elements, Bucerus Kunst Forum

Birds of Burghfield – Part One

/ Hugo Richardson / 1 Comment

When we first moved to Burghfield we were amazed at the wide variety of bird life, particularly aquatic, that live around the Kennet and Avon Canal and local stretches of water.

One of the most amazing species of bird that we have observed is the heron.  It is a very tall bird, with strange strands of feathers at the front, that make it look somewhat unkempt.

Fiona and I continually discuss the extraordinary features that this sizeable bird has. Their quirks include a bendy neck that it retracts when flying.  This is unlike other birds, like swans and geese, that straighten out their necks in front of them when in flight. The heron has 20 to 21 cervical vertebrae in its neck, which makes this possible.

They look like cloaked school masters in profile. Or the poem ‘Haegri’ (Shetlandic for Heron, please click on ‘Haegri’ for the full poem) by Roseanne Watt aptly describes her heron as ‘curled like a question mark’. They are one of the few species of birds that are prehistoric. I must admit they don’t look like a bird from this epoch when they fly, watching them makes me feel I have been transported millions of years back in time.

The heron is reluctant to take off because they weigh up to 2 kilograms and are up to 98cm in height, with feathers that provide some resistance to flight.  Consequently, a big wingspan is required and this measures up to a full 1.95 metres.

An adult heron needs around half a kilogram of food per day and they will continue on the hunt till this target is reached.  They eat fish, voles, frogs, eels, insects and young birds, like ducklings for example.  Mind blowingly we have seen a grown heron fly towards a mink in a distinctly aggressive way.

I am also convinced that the heron was the model for the birds in the Avatar films (please click on Avatar video clip for the plumes).  If you look closely at the photograph above, you can see a long dark plume of feathers trailing behind its head.  Their plume is like the reins that the avatars used to ride on the backs of magnificent birds depicted in the movies.

Please see photo below that shows the heron with neck fully retracted in flight.

Herons are also very solitary by nature.  I have only ever seen them on their own. Of course, they must find a partner in Spring, or the numbers would deplete quickly! The female will lay up to 10 pale blue eggs and both parents incubate the eggs for 25 days.

Sources of information include:

https://community.rspb.org.uk/ https://www.everyheron.com/

https://www.heronconservation.org/herons-of-the-world/heron-taxonomy-and-evolution/
 

hugo.richardson@image-memory.com 

Photographs by Hugo Richardson

Tel. 07476 343 777