Getting back to what happened with Monet and his color wheel. The color wheel, which Monet used, was from a chemist by the name of Chevreul. In the chemist’s book was a black and white diagram of a color wheel with complementary colors. The problem for today is that those complements did not have names.
In the early 20th century, an art teacher in the Bauhaus by the name of Itten tried to make color and color theory easy for the world. Itten wrote a book on his color theories and I don’t remember if it was three or four hundred pages. On the last few pages, he writes that his color wheel and his color theory do not work.
In the 1960s, an artist by the name of Joseph Albers appears to spend his life trying to attack Itten, proving that Itten’s color wheel does not work. What Albers said was that color is a learned thing, color interacts with other colors - we call that simultaneous contrast, and all of those things are true.
At this moment in the 1960s, the art schools of the world have already seen abstract work tell the art world there’s no need for foundational drawing and developing skills such as learning to see and touch.
Now with Albers, the final nail into art education and developing artists was just hammered home. And the art world heard there are no rules in art.
For 20 years of my art life, I would have to go to my wife to get help with color theory. Now when you’re teaching 250 adults a week in art and color, it makes one feel that the emperor is wearing no clothes and if you knew me, you would not like me.
One day I started with Chevreul’s and Itten’s color theories and I started to piece together things that did work and all of a sudden, I have a gift and talent with color. The emperor with no clothes is gifted in color because of some color theories, some work and some don’t.
I’ve studied art all over the United States. I went to school in Florence, Italy. I spent my lifetime copying and researching old masters. I’ve painted over 100 Sargent paintings and videoed them. I’ve copied his watercolors in oil paint just to learn how to keep a color, transparent and beautiful in oil paint.
And the only thing that changed in my art career is a few color schemes and a few color theories and all of a sudden now, I’m an artist.
Knowledge is power, before you go off and sign up for an art class maybe you should look at what they teach and if they teach anything at all because when I went to school it was all about your feelings and coming up with new ways to do something that no one has ever done before.