A colour series #1 blue
The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost… This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the colour blue.
Rebecca Solnit
The colour of that distance is the colour of an emotion, the colour of solitude and of desire, the colour of there seen from here, the colour of where you are not.
Rebecca Solnit
Blue. A colour that resonates with me so deeply that my friend named a particular shade after me. The colour that saturates our lives more than any other, the colour of the sky. Whether you live in a city or a wilderness, in Africa or Europe, blue will be your constant companion- look up and feel the comfort and ease- your loved ones will be gazing upon it too, wherever they are (unless they’re in Scotland in which case battleship grey might be more likely, but let’s not split hairs). Blue connects us all, reaching through time, space and distance, perhaps the only colour that does so. It is understood to be engrained in our psyche from hunter-gatherer days when we used the sky and water bodies to survive. We tend to associate blue with serenity and peace, gentle powdery tones that surround us with calm and orderliness. On the other hand, blue has the capability to shock and invigorate the senses; I remember feeling my pupils contract when I experienced the pure saturation of Majorelle blue in the gardens in Marrakesh for the first time, such was the intensity of that shade.
Blue is a rare colour in nature, even the animals and plants that appear blue to us are using a trick of the light to reflect it. The ancient Egyptians were the first to mine it (Lapis Lazuli) and discover how to heat crushed minerals with sand to create the pigment known as Egyptian blue. It was thought to be a mystical colour, not of the earth. Artists through the ages have clamoured to mix the perfect blue, during the Renaissance Ultramarine meaning ‘beyond the sea’ became synonymous with those illustrious Italian paintings. Ultramarine was highly prized and worth more than gold- a sacred colour, the shade Marian blue was developed to depict the Virgin Mary in countless works of art. Later Prussian blue covered the palettes of painters, and a serendipitous discovery by a pigment maker quite literally changed the world for artists who couldn’t afford the outlandish Ultramarine.
Blue, a colour that whilst experienced every day of our lives, is simultaneously unattainable, out of reach and enigmatic. And perhaps, in the end, that is why I love it so much, above all others. I cannot possess it only feel it, gaze towards it and consider its innate power and mystery.
Images collated from numerous online sources
