Orange and Green

I am working on a new painting— my first new one since Fort Point’s Spring Art Walk— and am working with orange and green. I can’t help but think of my UMASS-Boston poetry professor, Ron Schreiber, who introduced me to the work of Frank O’Hara when he was talking about the color orange.

We were reading O’Hara’s “Why I am not a painter” in class and Ron slapped his hand down on the page, flat, and said in his shrill, amused, and shocked voice pulling his glasses down with the other hand, “It IS so terrible… I mean, have you ever seen someone try and WEAR orange?” and he paused to let us all consider how very terrible it was.

I credit that poem, and Ron, and dyslexia, to my career in poetry and art.

And as for green. I was watching the PBS ART:21 series recently and Susan Rothenberg was talking about working with green and how intimidating it is— that you have to add some other colors to it right away. My experience with green in the past is the same; it is overpowering. Add green to a canvas and watch it become ridiculous. Which is ridiculous in itself, as so much of the world around us (leaves, grass, moldy bread) is green. It is as if nature has a copyright on the color. God saying “you go ahead— just try and paint with that.”

Orange and green. Orange and green.