The blissful ignorance of illusion

irritable blue syndrome

Cyanopsia is a medical term for seeing everything tinted with blue. It is also referred to as blue vision. Cyanopsia often occurs for a few days, weeks, or months after removal of a cataract from the eye. It also sometimes occurs as a side effect of taking Viagra.

It can be caused by a physical or functional abnormality of the eye, or the brain, or be purely psychological.  I came close to having cyanopsia after spending 10 hours painting out 50 blue panels in the Gallery,  maybe I’ll try viagra instead next time.

irritable bowel syndrome pills

The earliest pill emerged in ancient Egypt as a little round ball containing medicinal ingredients mixed with clay or bread. It wasn’t  until the 1960’s  when the new technology  made colourful medications possible for the first time.. Today’s pills can be tinted up to  80,000 colour combinations.

Blood Red and White horses

‘Bottle I’

‘Bottle II’

‘Bottle III’

Three cyanotypes made for the Regency colour Exhibition at the Royal Pavilion opening next week. I found these list of colours on the walls inside the main Dome of the Pavilion. I have no idea what they were for but are very evocative.  They are on the bare plaster walls and when photographed the discrepancies in the plaster looked like stars so I made them even more like stars. It seemed quite fitting as the inventor of the cyanotype was an astronomer and also the dome itself feels very other worldly when you are on your own up there looking down on Brighton from 360 degrees through windows like those in the photo below. Infact the whole place feels  feels like a space ship from an HG Wells story.

The windows in the Bottle

 

I found these lists  of colours amongst the hundreds of signatures up there, which i have also made a film of for the exhibition – here is the blurb about it –

“The dome above the Pavilion Saloon is known as the Bottle, a fragile, unrestored space originally intended as a billiard room.  Instead, the room was partitioned into a suite for Prince George of Cumberland, and after 1837 was occupied by Prince Albert’s valet.   The room has been left empty since 1850, and the grey plaster walls support hundreds of pencil drawings, signatures and dates that are a testament to the many people, craftsmen and artisans that have worked in and visited the Pavilion.  The practice of ‘leaving one’s mark’ began in the 1830s.   Like the Pavilion itself, the walls are layered with marks from the present over the faded past.  As in the rest of the building, it is often difficult to decipher what is original and what is not. The grey walls display a multitude of names from servants to guards and occasional visitors, and are the antithesis to the colour and splendour of the rest of the Pavilion.

The film I have produced for this exhibition documents these inscriptions.  It records the many different people who have been part of an unseen Pavilion, and who have played a vital role in making and maintaining the building in all its colourful grandeur.”

pavilion graffiti

Blue buried

monochrome 

The roadside museum is burying 5 of my paintings, http://roadsidemuseum.blogspot.co.uk/ – a series of monochromes and text based paintings based on the code of ethics for conservators. The paintings will be buried for a year in acidic soil and then exhumed to be exhibited at the Museum after I have ‘restored’ them. I am interested in seeing the objective/ subjective dilemmas  restoring my own artworks, ( which hat do I wear? Conservator or Artist or both) hopefully  the code of ethics for conservators I have painted out will guide me, ( or what ‘s left of it !). I have chosen Ultramarine to paint with as it is particularly susceptible to acidity. Broken a few codes already I feel

code of ethics

50 blues

 

Last Saturday, I painted out 50 blues onto 50 panels in Fabrica. I painted the most expensive pigment (lapis Lazuli £200 for 10 g)  to the cheapest Bic biro. Here they are all in all their glory and now exhibited in Fabrica. It was an interesting exercise, putting a Dulux colour next to a historic pigment. Some of them were very hard to paint out needing quite a few layers. The hardest was Egyptian blue a copper based pigment and the earliest used blue – it really clumped together  and was very coarse. Similarly but  not surprisingly Lapis was like painting with very fine sand, although darker than I had imagined  it has a depth and a gentle intensity that the other colours don’t have – Go and have a look – the names are not listed to keep you guessing but if you really want to know ask one of the volunteers they know the true identity of all ! 

Painting the blues

the blues

All day in Fabrica today I will be  painting out 50 shades of blue !

lavender blue

 i’m working on a project using this book ‘The British Colour Council Dictionary of colours for Interior Decoration’  (1930’s) for a video piece, here is a  sample from it.

Blue print synonyms !

Here are the suggestions so far for the final Blue Print – Keep them coming !

Favourites are …. ‘Blu tack blue’  ‘OS blue’  ‘Solar Powered’

Otis blue, Blue moon, blue Meanies, Blue Cat, perfect hue, stone blue, cerulean, Air mail blue, azure, blue velvet, willow pattern, thin blue line, sirens, Blue Dust, Robins egg blue, Teal, Petrol blue, True blue, Prussian blue, Azurite, Cambridge blue, Oxford blue, electric blue, solar powered blue, Facebook blue, OS blue, blu tack blue, kind of blue, Jarman’s blue, Woad, . 

True Blue

This is a photo from the inside of the old  Coventry cathedral, the one that got bombed, the spire survived which is on the left, and looking up is where the roof would have been. I’m working on a project with the Museé de Picardie in Amiens, who also have a Medieval Cathedral (tallest in France) , but survived the WWII  bombing , and also, like Coventry had a huge dyeing industry ( based on Woad)

True blue’ is supposed to derive from the blue cloth that was made at Coventry, England in the late middle ages. The town’s dyers had a reputation for producing material that didn’t fade with washing, i.e. it remained ‘fast’ or ‘true’. The phrase ‘as true as Coventry blue’ originated then and is still used (in Coventry at least). The town’s standing was recorded in 1670 by John Ray in the first edition of A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs: “Coventry had formerly the reputation for dying of blues; insomuch that true blue became a Proverb to signifie one that was always the same and like himself.”

‘High Altitude Blue’

 

A friend took this morning on the way to Crete – he suggested ‘High Altitude Blue’ does anyone have  any alternative names for it ?

Paint your ceiling ‘Blue Seduction 2’ today !

Blue Seduction 2

Cyanometer reading for 21.5.13, (11.04 am GMT), 50.8278° N, 0.1528° W

Here is the code for the paint, Dulux 33BB 32/308, if you want your ceiling to match the sky today.