Rose, Salmon, Mauve, Blood

Palette of the Month 007: Madder

Hello, on Valentine’s Day.

When choosing the material I wanted to explore for this round of natural color experiments, I wasn’t even thinking about the pink and red hallmark holiday, but a feeling I apparently so desperately need this month, which is comfort.

Comfort is a blanket feeling associated with more specific feelings such as safety, warmth, forgiveness, connection, compassion, and love. Those feel like important ingredients to me. This is my interpretation of red at this moment, but as we will see, red has many moods, intentions, and variations.

A splash of delight, binder illuminated and colored by the dust, not yet integrated.

On the visible light spectrum, the color red has the longest wavelength. This means that in regard to frequency, it has the lowest energy. Let’s contrast this with, say, an X-ray. X-rays have very short wavelengths, so their frequency produces higher energy. This is why X-rays can “see” through the bodily tissues (and why we are so careful with them). A similar thing with ultraviolet rays, which we know cause sunburn.

It’s weird, I normally associate red with urgency, hot spice, and danger, but when I apply the physics of light into an emotional or embodied context, doesn’t it sound like red is actually the safest, most comforting color? Vibrating at its deep and slow frequencies, I can almost hear the color, a bass note, at the root of my being.

This month’s exploration combines science, feeling, history and culture on one particular red in a report that will likely only graze the surface of the meaning of the plant I am collaborating with.

I had some defined objectives this month:

1. Create multiple shades and paints from one single dye bath

2. Experiment with chalk as an alkali for gouache pigment making

3. Modify hue with iron

4. Create a lake pigment making instructional guide (!), which will be linked below

5. Research the history and significance of the plant I am working with

6. Explore different emotional reactions to different mods of red.

Read on for more!