Category Archives: COLOUR SERIES

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…

The damp, earthy green of DUSTY LOTUS Linen brought shadowy depths into John Constable’s windswept landscapes, lending them the fresh coolness of the British countryside. Glowering, tempestuous skies hang over his brooding scenes, while the land below ripples in and out of the light, shifting from sunlit leaves to moody, cold shadows. Shifting patterns of…

Blue darkness descends across Paula Rego’s disquieting artworks, lending them a theatrical air as strange, unsettling narratives unfold. PRESTIGE linen’s deep blue mimics Rego’s midnight tone, a colour steeped in density, weight and the cloaked mystery of the night. Darkness also fills the content of Rego’s art as exquisitely drawn, macabre characters expose the menacing,…

Vibrant, seductive and indulgent, Crimson linen’s entrancing hue brought pulsing lifeblood into Jan Van Eyck’s iconic paintings. Red dye was rare and exotic in 15th century Europe, making it a potent symbol of luxury, wealth and prominence. In his real life portraits Van Eyck draped figures and interiors in this decadent red hue to signify…

The inky depths of INSIGNIA BLUE linen seeped dark stains into Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s evocative landscapes, lending them deep bass tones that hum with melodic resonance. The colour, known today as Prussian, or Berlin blue, swept across Europe in the 18th century, causing what some called a “blue fever”, as it infiltrated painting, wallpaper…

ENGLISH ROSE linen’s sumptuous, rustic crimson held great spiritual significance during the Italian Renaissance, clothing figures with indulgent drapes that seem to radiate human warmth. For centuries the colour red was deeply devotional, reserved for Christ, the Virgin Mary and their close circle, symbolising the love, passion and spilt blood of their shared tragedy. But…

Sanguine linen shares an earthy, enveloping warmth with the great French Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne, who infused his paintings with this glorious, sun glazed terracotta. Famously writing “the truth is in nature”, Cezanne obsessively copied the colour and light in the South of France onto canvas, capturing golden sunlight with soft sandy and earthy hues as…

VINEYARD GREEN linen is the colour of energy and growth, suggesting fleshy leaves and dense meadows of wild grass cast into an oasis of cool shade. French Impressionist painter Claude Monet saw the rich, vital potential of this colour, returning to it again and again throughout his career to convey the depth and variety of…

The delicate pale gold of Straw linen has the iridescence of sand bleached by the white summer sun. Impressionist painter Joaquin Sorolla saw in this colour the power to recreate searing hot Spanish sunlight as it flooded windswept beaches, flapping ship sails, straw hats and freshly starched clothing in his seemingly endless cycle of summer….