Colours do not follow the rules that
I attribute to them.
I look at a shade of grey. I know it is dark. I have
no reason to doubt it.
Then I bring it close to a shade of pink.
I expect to see it darken.
The opposite happens.
The pink brightens.
I return to the grey.
Its texture hasn’t changed. Nor has its shade.
I have added neither white, nor light, nor
transparency.
Yet I no longer see it in the
same way.
All it took was for another colour to come close.
The studio constantly undoes what I
thought I knew.
I bring the grey closer to the pink. I look. I
move it away. Something disappears. I
bring it closer again. The light returns.
I search for where it is.
In the grey?
In the pink?
I only see it appear when they’re together.
The grey remains grey.
But I can no longer simply say: this grey is dark.
I used to think that dark, light, bright or
dull were qualities that every
colour carried within it.
The sheet shows me that they can arise
from their proximity.
I stand for a long time before their
transformation
Nothing has been added to the grey. Nothing has
been taken away from it.
Its mere presence is enough to alter what I see.
A colour, then, cannot reveal itself
on its own. What I can say about it also depends on
what surrounds it.
I do not decide them. I discover them.
So I start again.
A colour.
Another beside it.
I watch what shifts between them.
The drawing does not confirm what I know.
It puts my certainties to the test against what
I see.
The grey hasn’t changed.
It is my certainty about grey that no longer holds.
