Recommended colours c.1970

In the 1970s, I studied to become a teacher of art, amongst other things.   Art students were often briefed, as I was, to confine one's palette to Alizarin crimson, Prussian blue, and Cadmium yellow with an intentional avoidance of black. Hues and tints were created with an additional use of complementary colour and titanium white.

        I had a different art tutor for each year at Shoreditch College of Education in England.   During the first year, John Spenser, introduced me to the psychodelic effects of colour, and the use of retouching varnish, to produce luminescent semi-transparent glazes.   During the second year, Gomer Lewis shared with us, his outrageously coloured abstracts, painted in response to his " gut " feelings, that were founded upon horrific experiences in Asia, " mopping-up " after the Second World War.   In the final year, the head of the art department, Frank Tuckett, encouraged me to persevere with my observation, and a " realism " in portraiture.

        By 1976, I married, and following adventure, moved to live amongst the forests, lakes, and rocky coastline of the State of Maine.   When teaching work was scarce, I turned to painting, amongst other things, to provide an income.   It was then, with the encouragement, of a group of professional artists, I discovered, that the most gorgeous greens could be replicated with an astute use of black and yellow and shadows could be defined in various hues of blue.   However, when I returned to England in the mid - 1980s, I found secondary school pupils, still using a palette of red, blue, and yellow, with little regard to the fact that general notions of light and colour, had changed.   The advent of colour photography, colour printing, colour television, and especially the graphic computer, challenged previous ideas, born of years of practice and tradition.   I questioned, whether or not, pupils should continue to be taught to express colours actually seen, with such limited, and unscientific palettes.