Category Archives: COLOUR SERIES

Master of understated elegance, Japanese printmaker Ando Hiroshige’s dreamy, wistful landscapes are filled with the sleek and refined grey of GRAPHITE Linen. In his quietly pensive scenes rich, warm grey tones become the solid mass of enduring trees, craggy rocks and distant mountains, iconic emblems that are built to last. Around them shards of red,…

Colouring flowers, ribbons, veins and pulsing hearts, the iridescent crimson in Biking Red Linen is the lifeblood of Frida Kahlo’s paintings. Echoing the tinge of red in the Mexican flag, this shade came to represent many forces in Frida Kahlo’s deeply introspective paintings, but a unifying theme was a love for her native Mexico, which…

EGGPLANT linen’s rich plum tone bled into Marc Chagall’s whimsical scenes, colouring them with stains as tart and ripe as fresh blackberries. Inventive colour was a vital strand in his fantastical scenes, taking his famous floating lovers, animals and musicians further from the realms of reality into a wondrous, escapist dream. He wrote, “Colour is…

Dazzling, brilliant blues like that of SAPPHIRE Linen define the paintings of Alexej von Jawlensky, streaking across his canvases with pulsing, living electricity. Modernist, Fauvist and Expressionist, Russian-born Jawlensky was a bold risk-taker, one whose wild, unbound art inspired a whole generation across Europe and beyond. Known as much for his mystical landscapes as his…

MALACHITE Linen’s earthy, rustic green was a favourite with Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, investing his paintings with the lush, juicy vibrancy of fertile nature. A giant of 20th century art, Malevich made his name as the world’s first abstract artist, producing streamlined designs in bold shades of red, green, yellow and black, mimicking the colours…

The cold, silvery hue of MONUMENT Linen flooded across French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte’s Parisian scenes, capturing the shimmering, majestic grandeur of the newly built city. Fascinated by photography, Caillebotte invested the same dazzling qualities of light into his canvases, letting surfaces glisten and reflect with a mirror-like sheen. Refined, sophisticated grey and silver tones were…

Dark and decadent, the midnight tone of DRESS BLUE Linen envelops characters in Antony van Dyck’s stirring portraits, enveloping them in a brooding, dramatic aura. Master of the Flemish Baroque, van Dyck was the most successful portrait painter of his day, most notably for King Charles I of England, but he also painted a wide…

One of the most famous artists of all time, Leonardo da Vinci’s art is filled with subtle, mysterious shades of brown like that of POTTING SOIL Linen, proving how entrancing this unassuming colour can be. From undulating landscapes to the tinge of angel’s wing tips, golden browns bring depth and weight into his quiet, mystical…

Torn scraps of colour and texture flit across Kurt Schwitters’ endlessly complex designs, pushing back and forth in a bid for attention. But uniting them is a love of caramel and golden browns, like that of GINGER Linen, which creates an overriding mood of warmth and familiarity. Made from the ephemera of his daily life…

OLIVE BRANCH Linen’s earthy green rolls outwards across Bosch’s fantastical scenes, forming endless pastures of muddy grass and fervent trees that evoke the utopian paradise of Eden. His paintings are brimming with moralising stories about life, love, loss and repentance, as impish humans, birds, fish, insects and machines form mini-dramas that play out in a…

British based painter Tomma Abts chooses retro, in-between shades that are hard to place, particularly the dusty, vintage pink of SHADOW GREY Linen. Woven like strips of found fabric into her abstract designs, ribbons of these unusual colours fold over and intersect with one another, creating complex visual puzzles that shift in and out of…

SPHINX linen’s exotic jewel tone unfurls across Inka Essenhigh’s evocative paintings, investing sublime oceanic depths or mysterious forests with a haunting, glowing aura. Fantastically surreal, her exquisitely detailed, atmospheric scenes collapse together natural and synthetic worlds, conveying lush, fervent landscapes populated by sprites and fairies, scenes painted with supernatural colours and the emanating light of…

Greens from all shades of the spectrum filled William Holman Hunt’s heady canvases, imbuing them with a rich, mysterious glow. Evergreen Linen’s deep, rustic green brought intensity and depth into his mythological scenes, whether indoors or out, invoking in them the awe and wonder of the English landscape. A leader in the Pre-Raphaelite school of…

AGAVE linen’s cold, watery green flowed through Edgar Degas’ paintings, illuminating grassy banks, café scenes and private interiors with the fresh sheen of Parisian light. Though his subjects were hugely varied, Degas’ paintings pivoted around moments of suspended tension, from racehorses to jittery dancers and precariously balanced nudes. Silvery green tones helped him invest this…