Every Leopard Is a Yellow Shape With Black Spots
On the radical clarity of painting only what you can name
I first walked into the painting compound off the road to Oyster Bay on a Tuesday afternoon in March. The courtyard was ringed with easels — not the adjustable walnut kind you find in European studios, but simple wooden frames leaning against whitewashed walls. Each painter worked on a sixty-by-sixty centimeter square of hardboard, and every one of them was using the same six tubes of bicycle enamel.
The Discipline of Six Colors
What struck me was the constraint. Cobalt for the ground — always. Vermilion for trunks, beaks, the occasional shawl. Emerald for canopy and grass. Bicycle yellow for sun, fur, plumage. Black for every outline, every spot, every stripe. The palette was fixed by tradition and by the medium: bicycle enamel comes in limited colors.
“A leopard is a yellow shape with black spots. The ground behind it is the color of the Indian Ocean at noon.”