Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay

(Ballantine Book, Ballantine Pub. Group, 2002)

I came across this title on a blog that I can’t recall.  It is a library book that I started reading last week and I’m finding it is more than just a good informative read, but an entertaining one as well.  I wasn’t expecting the latter at all.

It reads like a travel diary of the author and I feel like I’m going along on the trips with her as she discovers historical use and of colours in various regions of the world by different cultures of people.  After the preface, entitled The Beginning of the Rainbow, and the introduction, The Paintbox, successive chapters are divided by colour name.  The first colour is Ochre because it was the first colour paint.  I’m still in this chapter and while reading I keep seeing the ground upheaved at the construction site down the road from where I live.  Before I started reading this book I wanted to photograph the mounds of dirt because of the colour…a deep brown with red/orangey tones.  Last summer when I dyed fabric I kept playing with these colour ranges and in the fall I attempted a quilt design about my great grandmother’s house that used some of these fabrics.  Every time I drive by the construction site I regret not having my camera.  Now, since I’ve started this book, I’d like to get about a quart of the dirt to bury some fabric in to see how it will colour.  I don’t know if I will or not…the intersection is kinda busy.

Goddesses in Art by Lanier Graham

(1st Edition, 1997, Artabras-A Division of Abbeville Publishing Group)

A few months ago at art quilt critique group one of the members quipped that she was tired of seeing “goddess” images.  I’m not sure now if she meant the actual images as over done by artist or as a theme.  It stuck with me as I like examining how different artists portray goddesses and now I’m thinking that for me the question is how well the image is portrayed (how unique did the artist portray the image) versus how dependent the image is on other artists portraying the same image (not so unique). 

I just started this book and am still in the introduction which is giving a brief overview of when the images of sacred begin to change from female; female/male to solely male.  Time frames are broken into the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages.