froth of the liquid jade
“The ancient Chinese healers believed that the spirit and essence of the Great Mother Goddess flowed from the center of the Earth into plants and minerals. . . . The plants and stones that stored up the greatest amount of soul substance were the ones with good color. Jade, for example, was considered very powerful on account of its brilliant shades of green. The good color may be what attracted the healers also to the luscious, evergreen tea plant and might explain why, in China, tea as a beverage came to be known as the froth of the liquid jade, in honor of the much revered magical stone.”
—Beatrice Hohenegger, Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West, 2006.
green tea mixed with mint
“In Morocco youll be awed by the precision with which green tea mixed with mint is poured from a metal pot several feet away into your glass. In Japan youll be handed a bowl of bright green whipped matcha or delicate sencha.”
—Beatrice Hohenegger, Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West, 2006.
My cinnamon girl
“A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together
chasing the moonlight
My cinnamon girl”
—Neil Young, Cinnamon Girl, 1969.
Blue to Blue
“The Brain is deeper than the sea
Forhold themBlue to Blue
The one the other will absorb
As SpongesBucketsdo”
—Emily Dickinson, The Brain is wider than the Sky.
too white
“And even when youre healthy
And your colour schemes delight
Down below those dandy clothes
Youre just a shade too white”
—Adam & the Ants, Kings of the Wild Frontier, 1980.
light out of darkness
“The method of the old masters was to darken the canvas with brown or red-earth ground and then pull gleaming lights out of the gloom with touches of thick oil paint. The technique is called chiaroscuro, a term meaning light out of darkness. And while modern art has generally moved toward brighter colors, the drama of shadowy spaces lit by shafts of light continues to attract some of our most imaginative painters.”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
the yellow/violet chord
“The yellow/violet harmony can be summed up in a single wordexotic. For while red/green reminds us of trees and flowers, and orange/blue of earth and sky, the yellow/violet chord has little connection with everyday experience. Instead, we find it in rare butterflies, tropical birds, unearthly sunsets, costumes of the Far East, and the trappings of royalty.”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
[C]omplementary colors
“[C]omplementary colors have tremendous psychological importance. They touch upon deep-seated, universal experiences. In even the most abstract art, green reminds us of natures greenery, red, of its flowers. And blue will forever stand for sea and sky, orange for fire, purple for royalty, and yellow for the sun.”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
all of the color variables
“A picasso blue or an Ad Reinhardt black canvas is almost never truly monochrome, as imitators working with a single tube of paint plus white sometimes think. Instead, all of the color variables are normally present, even when compressed into a narrow range. . . .”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
five or six color combinations
“When I had every choice open to me . . . I used the same five or six color combinations. . . . Having imposed a system on the construction of an image, I found myself making shapes and colors I had never made before.”
—Chuck Close; quoted by Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.