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Blue is the color of distance
11/11/2022
MOST DAYS I hike for 25 minutes across town, passing all the cafe’s and shops, and up the long, steep petrol fumed hill, to my studio. Some days, I would simply prefer not to, but every day, I am glad I made it, because my view out the window is, in the final analysis, why I came to this place. Up here, in my studio, I feel like I am in the sky...
My studio looks down into the valley, and out over the city of Aberystwyth Wales, which sits at the end of the valley carved by the river Rheidol, and seemingly spills out into the Irish Sea like sediment.
Back down the hill, there is an old castle ruin that sits upon a promontory on the south westernmost point of town. From here, I feel like I am in the sea... and Ican see the Welsh coast curve towards Cardigan island to the south, and up past the western most mountains of Snowdonia and around and out to Bardsey Island in the North.
Back down the hill, there is an old castle ruin that sits upon a promontory on the south westernmost point of town. From here, I feel like I am in the sea... and Ican see the Welsh coast curve towards Cardigan island to the south, and up past the western most mountains of Snowdonia and around and out to Bardsey Island in the North.
The colors of the water and sky change all the time with the wind and weather, but predominantly, I see distance, and I see blue, blue, blue. Rebecca Solnit refers to blue, in her book “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”, as the color of distance. In the opening gambit of chapter two, ‘The blue of distance’ she says:
“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and there.”
For myself, I find solace in the blue of distance. I feel a sense of deep relief in that space. I don’t feel longing, when staring out to sea, or into the sky, I am right where I want to be in that moment. I don’t feel like the blue of distance is out of my reach, or that it is the atmosphere which impedes my desires, on the contrary, the farther I can see into distance, the less confined I feel, the more space I have to roam, the more expansive my mind. When I can see as far as my eyes can see, I feel grounded, I know right where I am. Looking out over the sea to the horizon, is knowing that there is more openness beyond... looking up into the sky, is knowing that it is endless... it’s freedom.
“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.
For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and there.”
For myself, I find solace in the blue of distance. I feel a sense of deep relief in that space. I don’t feel longing, when staring out to sea, or into the sky, I am right where I want to be in that moment. I don’t feel like the blue of distance is out of my reach, or that it is the atmosphere which impedes my desires, on the contrary, the farther I can see into distance, the less confined I feel, the more space I have to roam, the more expansive my mind. When I can see as far as my eyes can see, I feel grounded, I know right where I am. Looking out over the sea to the horizon, is knowing that there is more openness beyond... looking up into the sky, is knowing that it is endless... it’s freedom.
I generally use the blue of the sky and water, the blue of distance, to create atmosphere in my paintings, to provide a serene backdrop to the mysterious objects whom are the main characters... or are they? Perhaps the real power in the work is in fact the sea and sky?