Sarah Needham Artist

As you can imagine I own alot of books about colour and pigment, so I thought I would review a few here, opinions expressed are of course my own…

Josef Albers,  Interaction of Colour, 50th anniversary edition, Yale University Press, USA 2006          Any one thinking about colour will have come across the work and writing of Josef Albers. this work is considered to be a classic of its time.  My very brief opinion of this book is that for a book about colour the presentation is dry. It reads as a series of lesson plans, which is fine if you want a ready set of lesson plans to teach about colour without using any paint at all.  While I think his work is truly beautiful in a stripped back minimalist simplicity, and a massive range of colour relationships are explored, they are approached in a rather puritanical systematic way, which I find too spartan to bear.  I have found this book useful by noting down the relationships he explores, but would not use his approach to exploring them in either my practice or in teaching.  I know that I am being sacrilegious to some, but I am bound to the sensuality of paint and painting.

N Easthaugh et al, Pigment Compendium, Routledge, 2013 USA My favourite Colour Book of the last year is The Pigment Compendium, this is a rather ramshackle book, like the old V and A museum as  it was when I was a student.  You can find the chemical structure of pigments here, their history, mythology, it is really useful as a research source for particular pigments, and as a starting point . Sometimes the text is rather wiwpediaesque in its eclecticism but I actually quite like that.

J Balfour-Paul, Indigo, The British MuseumPress, 2011, UK The third book I am going to recommend is published by the British Museum and written by the researcher and indigo guru Jenny Balfour-Paul.  Called Indigo, this is an overview with global and historical reach about indigo its qualities, trade relationships, and place in the geopolitical world. It is comprehensive and fabulous, and properly indexed so you can research further if you want to.  When I was researching indigo I kept coming across Balfour Paul in academic citations, and once I found this book I found my shortcut.

I think that is enough for now…happy reading.