Category Archives: COLOUR SERIES

Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer made art that was imbued with shades of pale gold like HOLLAND, drenching his intimate, ordinary scenes with glowing, radiant light. In comparison with his peers, Vermeer made a comparatively small body of work, producing only around 45 in his lifetime, and of those, only 36 are known today….

Swedish mid-20th century artist Birgit Skiöld was a pioneer in printmaking, a serial experimenter who skilfully merged traditional printing techniques with playful abstract motifs that hint at the movements and patterns of nature. Much of her work was elemental and ephemeral, made up of wispy, uneven lines and ghostly, barely-there colours, but rich, dark blues…

The paintings of Swedish visionary Hilma af Klint are filled with quiet wonder, gateways into their own private spiritual realms where looping floral patterns intersect with floating geometric patterns. Each artwork she made was invested with her own codified language of signs and symbols that pointed to her fascination with abstract, ethereal forces beyond the…

The silvery grey-blue of LAGOON linen became leaden, steely skies in the hands of painter Joan Eardley, capturing the furious energy of storm-laden seascapes in thick slabs, swipes and streaks of moody colour. A master in capturing the wild, elemental and unspoilt beauty of the Scottish coastline, Eardley heaved huge canvases into the landscape during…

Deep shades of indigo like Japanese Blue were a potent tool in the arsenal of much-loved 19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, a means of investing dark, brooding shadows into his atmospheric woodblock prints. From the cavernous depths of gushing waterfalls to the timeless silhouette of Mount Fuji, he layered this entrancing shade of darkness…

The great American realist Edward Hopper had a remarkable gift for observation, finding strange intrigue in the most unlikely of places. Gas stations, late-night bars and quiet buildings tucked away in the wilderness all take on an enigmatic wonder through his stark, directional lighting, angular compositions and striking accents of colour. BARN RED Linen’s entrancing…

There is a light, airy delicacy to DAWN linen, suggesting spring blossom or translucent rose petals blushing pink in the sunlight. It was a colour American artist Georgia O’Keeffe returned to over and over, capturing the pastel toned vibrancy of fresh, new flowers and the dry, parched earth of America’s barren deserts with the same distinctive…

Darkness pervades Tacita Dean’s artworks, falling over craggy rocks and epic mountains into inky, bottomless wells. Black Linen shares Dean’s endless black, a colour that intensifies mystery and drama, cloaking and concealing everything it touches. The dark shadows in Dean’s artworks heighten the sublime, cinematic awe of her scenes as she draws us in, inviting…

Dusty, dreamy shades of lilac like WISTFUL MAUVE appeared time and again in the art of pioneering abstractionist Hilma af Klint, representing otherworldly, spiritual states of mind. A medium, theosophist and artist of the early 20th century, Af Klint is now widely recognised as one of the very first abstract artists. Throughout her long career,…

DOVE linen’s near white has just a hint of turquoise blue, mimicking the pale, salty light of JMW Turner’s stunning Venetian marine views. Known as the ‘painter of light’, Turner was entranced by Venice, with its green-blue water reflecting the sky into illusions of infinite, endless space. The floating city became a recurring theme in…

Pioneering modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe made a series of radical breakthroughs during the early to mid-20th century, taking seemingly ordinary, everyday subjects and investing them with a newfound wonder. Of all the subjects she painted, it is her flowers that have received the most critical acclaim; fleshy, bold, and daringly direct, they broke away from…

In Vincent van Gogh’s late paintings, pale blues like Sky became a primary feature, documenting his own intimate, expressive response to the landscapes of Saint-Remy and Auvers. His landscapes convey the wonder he felt at the swirling, iridescent blue light opening out above and all around him, which he painted in sparkling, luminescent shades of…

MEDITERRANEAN BLUE is a dazzling, electrifyingly bright colour that conveys the soaring brilliance of summer. Artists through the generations have explored how this entrancing shade of turquoise blue can capture the light of the European coastline, encapsulating the azure blue of the ocean and the wide-open, cloudless skies overhead. We look at three pioneering French…