If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light.
This is a shock to most people.
James Turrell
The light from the sun might appear white, but yet it really comprises a spectrum replete with colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. So when white light hits an object, that object absorbs some colors and reflects others and we see the color it reflects. If the light absorbs all colors but green, we will see green and perhaps, thank Chlorophyll for her role in photosynthesis and in feeding all of us on Earth. We might also thank the light
Green, along with red, orange, yellow, blue and violet, is a fundamental color of nature, of our flora and of the well-being of our fauna. In my painting OUR EARTH: OUR CHOICE, I set out both to celebrate the beauty of our planet and point to the urgency of preserving its precious and glorious biodiversity for our children, their children – and for all the species and ecosystems with whom we coexist.
I also produced a video by the same name together with Music Composer AARON A. KAPLAN and Videographer ERIC COSH. In it, we pay tribute to those many committed individuals and institutions whose life’s work is the PRESERVATION of the BIODIVERSITY of our EARTH – people such as: E.O. Wilson, John M. Anderson, Maarten De Wit, to name but a few.
For this painting, I used a range of different shades of green paint from Brilliant Yellow Green to Bright Aqua Green to Emerald Green, Vivid Lime Green, Green Gold and Phthalo Green. I hoped to capture the luminosity, at least to some extent, of the greenness of our planet, which, combined with emerald hues of glowing, multifaceted pyrite crystals and the green of sapphires with bluish green to yellowish green tinges, makes our habitat immensely precious and magnificent, endowments we must do all we can to preserve.
So let us always go beyond just looking at our world but actually perceiving and feeling its magnificence. We can celebrate through the green wavelength that reaches our eyes, the beauty all around us. Green is a symbol of energy, fertility, new life and growth. There are so many variations of that color from which I can choose when I paint and I can choose also, to appreciate and preserve the many different hues and variations in our natural environment.
Ellen, thanks for sharing mixing of colors. I am interested in knowing what you get when you mix blue and red. You see, on election night we see on the map blue and red. Would it not be a dream come true to mix the democrats and republicans together and make this a more perfect union? Yes, what do you get when you mix blue and red?
Sam – if you mix red and blue paints, you can get a really good purple, a color which historically was a serious, imperial and ecclesiastical color. The color was also associated with mystery and wisdom, ingredients so lacking in our politics today. How right you are Sam that instead of a clear division on the map on election night of red and blue, we saw instead or at least, as well, the color of wisdom and higher thought – PURPLE – representing a thoughtful, potent integration of the best that blue and red have to offer.
Wonderful, Ellen, to sit focused again on your ‘Our Earth: Our Choice’ video. That brilliantly expressive tumble of greens making up Africa, and of blues making up the oceans surrounding her. That nightmare of darkness portraying the abyss if we explosion-of-humans continue with ‘business-as-usual’!
Aaron’s music draws us in to the moving imagery so compellingly, Eric’s videography holds one there engrossed, your artwork leaves us juggling with our most-profound Choice!!!
Our unbelievably beautiful green-blue Earth!
Let us together achieve the impossible and keep her that way–for ‘the children of today and the children of tomorrow’, and for the many millions of other species!
How beautifully you perceive all this, John, and I in turn, second you on all you are doing on your side of the globe to keep our green-blue Earth “that way–for ‘the children of today and the children of tomorrow’, and for the many millions of other species!”