Black is the New Orange

Learning about color from my father

I’m back in Provincetown, Massachusetts where my parents have been coming to paint during the summers since before I was born. Spending time with them here has been a blessing, as it has given me the opportunity to paint with my father for the first time in years.

I find that I am still learning. Last summer I was working on a portrait of two young women dressed in blue and perched on rocks at the seaside resort of Alicante, Spain. It was a complicated piece because of the juxtaposition of blue against the backdrop of the Mediterranean.

I was trying desperately to hit the right note for this complicated orchestra of colors. I wanted the painting to sing, but I was struggling. I needed a cool tone that was blue, green, but had a touch violet. The sky was the bluest yellow and the jean shorts were a violet blue that popped. I needed the color of the water to support this ensemble. I decided to experiment with black.

I knew it was a risky move and one I knew that my father, a traditionalist, wouldn’t like because he doesn’t view black as part of the color spectrum for painters. When he came over to monitor my progress his eye went immediately to that part of the canvas and he began to pepper me with questions.

When my parents met at the Art Students League in New York City in the 1950s they were taught to paint portraits in tones of light and shade. Color wasn’t the focus. The idea was to imagine how light particles drift across a figure and focus on how the light dissipated at the edges.

At about this time, my parents learned about Henry Hensche, who espoused radical ideas about how color should be the basis for painting. Hensche was an immigrant from Germany who passed through Ellis Island before landing in Chicago. He later settled in Provincetown and studied under the guidance of Charles Webster Hawthorne’s Cape Code School of Art.

I first met Hensche as a child when he painted my portrait. I recall how my parents drove me to his studio for several weeks. I had to stand as still as possible as he squinted and glared at me. At one point he told me he didn’t like me. I responded by saying ,”I don’t like you either.”

When I was 18 years old my parents made me go to Hensche’s garden to learn how to paint color theory. I dutifully set up my palette and began to paint the simple yellow blocks in the blazing sun.

Several hours later, he came to peer over my shoulder. Grabbing my palette and knife, he scrapped off the black and threw it into the grass. He loaded my palette knife with the entire pile of yellow paint and threw it at the canvas. “Warmer!!!” Henri believed you tamed the wild array of colors that you fearlessly threw at the canvas. He did not believe in timidly creeping into the magic of color.

It was a striking lesson but he taught me color theory. He made me a great colorist. I learned that black is not a color. We do not paint in tones. We paint with pure color. We begin with pure pigment and then tame it. His critical style suited me when I was 18 and I thrived. I loved color. I painted without black on my palette for most of my career and never questioned that decision until last summer when I impulsively reached for black to finish the portrait of the two young girls.

I threw the black on the canvas and stepped back. It worked! Perfection!!!

I laughed and thought. ‘I wonder if he will notice.”

Of course he did. He nodded and told me the solution really worked.