Why Blue? The Color That Calls To Us
I became fascinated by the color blue in high school, when mood rings became popular. If I remember correctly, your mood ring turned blue if you were feeling peaceful and tranquil (which almost never happened to me in high school, so maybe that explains it).
Fast forward a few decades later and like many, many artists, I find blue a subject of endless fascination. It is my most used color in the studio and I buy it in large cans (not tubes, which seem to be gone in an instant).
Blue has an interesting history in art. Probably because it was not a color that came from soil, it showed up pretty late to the paint party. The ancient Greeks didn't even have a word for blue; and although the Egyptians seem to have manufactured a synthetic blue, it wasn't until lapis lazuli began to be mined around 650 AD that blue pigment became available in other places. It was made by grinding the stone into powder and this was of course very expensive. Renaissance artists had the pigment available to them, but because of the cost, it was reserved for very special subject matter, such as royalty, and of course the Virgin Mary. Interestingly, "Marian Blue" is still referred to as though it is a distinct hue of blue (it's not; it came from lapis lazuli, in other words, what painters commonly call Ultramarine Blue.)
Artists are not alone in their reverence for blue. If you live in America, chances are that your favorite color is blue, whether you are male or female, young or old, etc. It seems that everyone loves blue.
Monet’s Waterlilies
On view at the L’Orangerie in Paris, France
But why blue? Why do so many people love it and even obsess over it? The poet and critic, Maggie Nelson wrote an entire book about blue (Bluets), in which she confessed to a desire to own it, to swim in it, to be its lover.
I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but blue pops up as a major theme in my paintings, especially in the last year or so, and I find that my head is turned by almost any subject matter that is naturally blue (the sea, blue eyes, the endless cascades of blue hydrangeas along the Brittany coastline).
Every once in awhile I poke around looking for a rationale to explain my love of blue and I'm always frustrated by the lack of an answer. Blue can mean so many different things (tranquility, sadness, stability, wisdom...the list is long).
The closest I've come is to an explanation that describes the pull that blue seems to have on me personally comes from the German Romantics, who used a blue flower as a symbol for metaphysical longing (which I can relate to; see my Artist Statement). Many writers, including C.S. Lewis, referenced the symbolic blue flower as a way of describing that feeling that grabs us during an encounter with beauty, with the divine, or with something that feels transcendent, even if we can't quite describe what it is.
Perhaps my love for blue is simply one more manifestation of a craving for spiritual connection. Blue is above (in the sky) and below (in the sea). In both instances it lies just beyond our reach and we can only truly experience the tiny parts of these realms that our eyes are capable of seeing. This unattainability is not necessarily a bad thing, but just a reminder that we can only touch and understand a microcosm of that big beautiful whole out there.
Then again, maybe I love blue because it is just so, so pretty…