I arrived back home in Benson just in time for the first big snow of the year. It came down all day and night Friday, light and airy, quiet and peaceful, white on white. The perfect inspiration for two swaps I have due mid-month for the artfortytwo.org site.I was recently looking through an issue of Midwest Living in which a couple had done their Christmas decorating in a white on white theme. It was quite simple but elegant. White is cold, yet calm and serene. It speaks to us of purity and goodness, hope. It is clean, fresh, new. When I picture the color white I see snowflakes and winter. I see delicate lace, the luster of pearls, white doves of peace, the fire in an opal.
Just because something is white does not mean it has to be colorless. Actually the quality of white in the light spectrum is not the absence of color but the combination of all color. One of my drawing teachers in college was known for fabulously detailed color pencil work. I was particulary awed by her colored pencil drawings of white objects such as rabbits. Somehow she managed to never lose the white quality of her subjects even though her drawings were in color.
White is the color of new beginnings. Every artist or writer who faces a blank white page or canvas know how it feels just before you commit pen to paper. Scary. However, more often than not what emerges is beauty, like newly fallen snow on a winter landscape.
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