Tag Archives: color scheme

Country Kitchens

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Dear Reader,

Have you seen some of the beautiful country kitchens in the design and decorating magazines? How lovely, how charming, but not at all the way that I remember farm and mining town kitchens in the 30s.

Things were there for utility, not for colorful charm. Black cast-iron wood stoves with chrome fittings and tin stovepipes that poked through the roof.

There was a rough wood box for kindling, a breadbox, tin containers with faded labels, pull-out bins for flour and cornmeal, faded curtains, wood countertops and a kitchen table with all the paint worn off, but very little color. The color I remember is the “dirty-thirties” green glass, which was awful.

The kitchens were well stocked, but everything was faded from age and hard use, especially the pots and pans that were beat-up cast-iron, tin and copper. There were wooden spoons, forks and spatulas for cooking, and mismatched “silverware” for the table. There were plenty of ceramic mixing bowls, soup bowls and plates for family, friends and farm hands, and the kitchen was the warmest room in the house, summer and winter. I loved being there.

Water came from a well with a hand pump by the sink or a larger pump outside that had to be primed and pumped. Sometimes, the sink was wood and water drained into a “slop-bucket.” In the back yard was our two-holer.

Rustic Leaves

This rustic, autumn leaf color wheel is a combination of pale and dark color schemes.
The six primary and secondary colors were tinted, then toned down slightly with subtle sponged-on texture. This texture, a splatter of neutral colors and black, frames an arrangement of small, randomly colored leaves. Seems appropriate for today’s subject.

Country Kitchen

I start these kitchen still-life sculptures by cutting, texturing and painting dozens of bowls, vases, lanterns, tins, implements and foods, not knowing how they will be used. I  choose from this large inventory when composing a piece. (I still have several boxes of kitchen elements left over.) I seldom cut and finish something just for a composition. The first example is a dark, earthy color scheme using a wide range of neutral colors that are enhanced with oil pastels after everything is in place; the paper is mostly acid-free museum board that is sometimes used as mat board for framing. The board is difficult to cut on a bias.

Country Kitchen

Everything is old and beat up in this composition, and the enamel is almost all chipped off the coffee pot, leaving rust and wear. The color scheme is warm and tinted neutrals.

Country Kitchen

Very close values in the yellow-yellow orange range of neutral colors are balanced by small, cool, blue and blue-green elements. The rusts are made of iron in fluid that is sprayed with a reactive agent that makes it rust.

Country Kitchen

The color scheme above combines dark, intense hot color with dark neutral cool hues. The values (dark and light) are very close across the entire spectrum. Several intense yellow, green and blue elements are the transition and balance between the two extremes.

Country Kitchen

The country kitchen still life displays the prevailing features of my technique. The work exhibits close value and warm and cool comparisons. In a sea of dark, neutral, cool hues, an arrangement of hot elements on the left side of the composition is balanced by smaller warm objects on the right. The focal point is the central grouping of a bright, yellow pitcher, lemons and a vase with a grouping of bright green leaves for cool relief …aaaaahhhhhhhh…..

That’s quite a lot for the moment. I think I’ll make a peanut butter sandwich and have a cool glass of freshly churned buttermilk…aaaaaaahhhhhhhh……

Thanks for visiting me.

leo

Country Kitchen #3, 26″ x 20″, is available at the Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery. $2000.

Other kitchen sculptures are available at the Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC.

A Summer Day, Work & Play

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Dear Reader,

May 25th. I remember anticipating the coming summer vacation when in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Shoes and shirts off, strap overalls. No underwear until school started in the autumn. Keystone, SD, in WWII was a dream for boys. The Black Hills were our playground with the granite mountains, ponderosa pines, streams and lakes, all in sight of Mount Rushmore.

Playtime was precious because the men had gone to war, and we were left to take up the slack. We had chores, but not one of us felt put upon. I fed chickens, gathered eggs, cleaned the coop, slopped the pigs (I was scared to death of the big pigs), sawed logs with a small, one-man crosscut saw, split the wood, and put it in a wheelbarrow. I wheeled it across a wide farmyard, across the creek and into our house and my grandfather’s house. I had my own small axe, which I threw until I broke the handle.

I had to fill the wood-box for the cook stoves and for the pot-bellied heating stoves in both houses. That was a lot of sawing, splitting and wheeling for a little kid, around eight to ten trips in all. If you didn’t finish, you would be out there in rain or snow until you did. A few of the boys had cows to milk, butter to churn, and horses to take care of on top of everything else.

Guernsey Cows

In spite of the work, we always fished, hiked and climbed those granite giants. This cow color wheel is my symbol of those days and how we felt about life. The colors include the three primaries yellow, red and blue as well as the secondary hues orange, violet and green. All are at full intensity (purity), as bright as a bunch of balloons.

I put black spots on the cows because I always liked the black-and-white Guernsey cows best. We didn’t know about cow tipping, but we did know about dried cow-pie tossing, especially at each other. A laughing boy’s organic frisbee.

Vladimir&Estragon

These figures were done for the run of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” for which I had done the set. Vladimir and Estragon remind me of us boys waiting for summer vacation, which, like Godot, never seemed to come. Sometimes the things you really crave never show up; I work in the moment and stuff shows up.

The figures are roughly sketched and then drawn with a knife, cutting them from museum board, which is usually used for acid-free mats. The strips are torn from waste paper; I save every scrap that I think has possibilities. I want the striping to look unplanned, with great variations in texture. The colors are random, but there is always play between warm and cool, dark and light, bright and neutral. The color scheme is dark, which enhances those variations and comparisons; I quit when it yells at me to stop.

It’s as if my design and color knowledge were in a fanny pack, and when I need a solution and reach for it, it’s always there. Serendipity is my guide, creating life as I want it to be. Whatever happens should happen naturally.

The boy, Pozzo & Lucky

Here is the rest of the cast of “Godot” on a dark background of neutral burnt orange, dry-brushed over a deep forest green with some black in it. There are the boy, Lucky, and Pozzo. I think of them as Jack, Raymond and Jim, or any of the boys in Keystone.

Sadly, there are only two or three of us left.

Thanks for visiting me.

leo

The two “Godot” pieces are available for $850 each.
They are varnished, unframed and should remain so.
leomonahan@tds.net

The Grovewood Gallery is now representing me in the Asheville, NC area

Vladimir