Life in Colour: Making the Case for Colour at Home
For the best part of a decade the default Australian interior has been some shade of white, grey or pale timber. It photographs well and it sells houses. It also leaves a lot of walls doing nothing.
Life in Colour is a collection we put together for exactly those walls. Paintings that carry enough colour on their own that nothing else in the room has to try.
Why colour, and why now
A neutral room isn't finished, it's a backdrop. Put one painting with real colour in it on the main wall and the sofa, the rug and the timber all start reading as deliberate rather than safe. The room gets a centre.
It's also the least committed way to change how a room feels. Repainting a feature wall locks you in. A painting moves house with you, and moves rooms when you get bored of it.
Australian light is hard on soft palettes. By mid afternoon a pale print has washed out to nothing. Heavy pigment on canvas holds its colour at three o'clock in February, which is when you'll notice it.
And these artists don't pick colour off a chart. Salt lakes after rain, wildflowers, ochre, the green of a waterhole. The colour comes from country, and you can tell.
Placing it
One wall, one painting. Three small ones spread around a room compete with each other. Hang it lower than feels right, so the centre sits around eye level when you're seated. Pick one colour from the canvas and repeat it once, a cushion or a vase, then stop. Don't match the sofa.
"Pututju" Rhoda Tjitayi 195cm x 167cm
Rhoda doesn't hold back. Hot pink, orange, violet and turquoise rolling across the canvas in waves. This is the one for a room that has nothing else going on, because after this it won't need anything.
"Pantu (Salt Lake)" Janice Stanley 199cm x 116cm
Janice's salt lakes are all movement. Long sweeps of pink, mauve and rust with fine white tracery over the top. Warm rather than loud, and it sits beautifully against timber.
"Tingari" Bob Gibson Tjungurrayi 203cm x 89cm
A different way of using colour. Bob lays it down in blocks, layered and scraped back until the surface reads like stained glass. Blue, green, orange, red and purple in a long horizontal format, which is exactly what a sideboard or a bedhead wants.
"Women's Body Paint" Debra Nangala McDonald 120cm x 117cm
Graphic and high contrast. The black and white gives it structure, the orange, pink and teal do the rest. Near enough to square, and it holds its own in a modern room that would swallow something softer.
"Awelye" Karen Bird Ngale 138cm x 81cm
For anyone who wants colour without the volume. Karen's palette here is pastel, pink, lilac, mint and lemon all at the same soft pitch. Bedrooms, or a hallway that gets morning light.
"Bush Medicine Leaves" Esther Haywood Petyarre 94cm x 72cm
Loose, brushed leaves in blue, orange, pink and cream. Under $900, and it does a lot for a smaller wall.
"Wanampi Tjukurpa (Piltati)" Megan Lyons 81cm x 58cm
Green, blue, yellow, pink and orange, fully saturated, with ringed circles across the middle. Small in size, not in presence.
Screens flatten colour. If you're in Adelaide, come and stand in front of one at the gallery in Edwardstown. The rest of the collection is below.