I was walking to work the other day and noticed a shimmering oil slick on top of a freshly paved road that had been rained upon. At the right angle there was a rainbow's worth of colours visible on the black asphalt. Its not an accident or anything, just the tar leaching out of the road...asphalt is derived from petro chemicals after all. It makes you wonder what we inhale and get from these toxic roadways? There is an interesting connection between the colours on the wet road and the history of art pigments. As far back as the 19th century the pigment makers knew about coal-tar pigments, the first one was a dark red magenta, similar to the colour you see in the upper left of the abstract painting. The initial pigments were unstable and unpleasant, but after enough time the chemistry was optimized and by 1960's onwards the coal tar pigments would basically replace most other pigments in the yellow to magenta range.
For the painting I was trying to use up some tubes that I don't use for anything else. The charcoal colour is a grey mix (PV19 + PG7 + PBk6), the yellow is vanadium yellow (PY184), the magenta is PV19, the red and orange are from pyrol red (PR254). I splashed in some green (PG36) to complete the charcoal rainbow effect.
Ancestral Colours, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, April 2024
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