FS Colour Series: DESERT SAND Inspired by Paul Gauguin’s Fertile Earth

From dusty mountaintops to well-trodden tracks beaten dry by the sun, soft shades of pink like DESERT SAND crop up time and again in Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin’s art. He coupled this warm, hazy shade with lush, tropical greens and blues, conveying far flung, idealised and paradisiacal escapes from the grey smoky haze of the increasingly…

The leading 19th century Japanese artist Utagawa Yoshitora has a particular preference for crushed violet and indigo shades like HERON, weaving them into his intricate ukiyo-e woodblock prints in the most creative and inventive ways. Sometimes they are small accents of mysterious shadow peppered across still, tranquil scenes. Other times they fill much of the…

Tourmaline’s frosty shade of pale turquoise became winter skies, icy water and crystalline, snow peaked mountain tops in the hands of Russian-born painter Nicholas Roerich. A spiritual nomad and intrepid explorer, Roerich spent much of his adult life exploring some of the farthest unchartered reaches of the world, most notably the treacherous terrain of the…

Rich, warm browns like COGNAC linen appeared again and again in Swiss artist Paul Klee’s art, colouring it with deep, dark and mysterious qualities. Klee was one of a generation of early 20th century artists who abandoned references to the real world, reaching instead for ways to represent transcendental experiences and unseen spiritual realms. He…