Bob BRIGHTON

born 1936, Brighton, United Kingdom
lives and works Sussex, United Kingdom

Artist statement:

On Colour

Even though I am active in creating works of art, my basic stance is passive and one of learning. Colour is not something I use for effect, but more to enjoy a profound relationship with it. For me there is no other language quite so eloquent. This is the excitement of it all - I am still trying to understand what colour is and has to say. It is my personal adventure.

My greatest challenges are my monochromes wherein I try to do a portrait of a colour. It is still incredibly difficult.

In order to explain how my work evolves I need to speak about my palette which is very rare, especially today. We are initially taught that there are three primary colours and then we have non-colours, etc. - the same philosophy that persisted in our attitude to men, with women being secondary - and also white men, with all other colours being secondary. This is of course ignorance and nonsense.

I discovered that we have three primary colours, that's true, but we also have three other primary colours that are synonymous with the first three. They are black, brown and white. The structures one uses for the first three can equally be used for the second three. Just as green (yellow + blue) is the complementary of red, so grey (black + white) is the complementary of brown. So, in that way, as we arrive at orange, green and purple from blue, red and yellow - we arrive at ochre, grey and dark brown from black, brown and white.

Over the years I have realised that blue and black, red and brown, yellow and white, orange and ochre, green and grey, purple and dark brown are interchangeable - which on a social, philosophical, human level is very exciting. These are just the primaries and secondaries, but you can apply the same approach to finding the complementaries of green, orange and purple - and grey, ochre and dark brown. These I could call tertiaries.

As there is a quite large palette of acrylic colours produced, I can mix the colour I want in my mind and pick a ready-made colour. When I proceed further with the tertiaries, to find their complementaries I have to resort to mixtures, which funnily enough seem to be very good complementaries of the original primaries. I call these procedures - for my own use - 'progressive complementaries', which eventually create their own complete universe, or whole vision, or all-embracing aesthetic.
Of course, the way people see my paintings is up to them. I certainly wouldn't tell them what they should be experiencing. That would be the same as thinking I could run their lives. At the end of the day, the viewer is equal to the creator. They must do as I do - fend for themselves.

Other selected artwork acquisitions