Hear my song, Violetta,
Hear my song beneath the Moon.
Recorded by Josef Locke.
Violet, the color at the end of the visible spectrum of light, has long been associated with royalty, spirituality and majesty. Violets (Viola) are a genus of spring flowering plants in the family Violaceae with 400-500 species of Violets in different shades of violet and blues, actually, many hues, some of which reside in my paint box labeled “Violets & Purples.”
I also make a pure violet color by combining a warm red and a cool blue. Because I am aware that these paints can contain other pigments and I want to avoid any muddiness in the violet color, I make sure that I choose a red paint that does not contain yellow pigment – actually one that is more like a dark pink. I also ensure that the blue paint which I use, does not have any yellow, red or green pigments in it. And when necessary, I use white to lighten the color. It takes some experimenting to achieve this, but ongoing experimentation is an intrinsic part of my process.
Indeed, painting is a constant search for the unification of a visual depiction of what I want to create and the feeling within me. That feeling is the impetus for the creative journey – a quest for the perfect (in one’s own estimation) luster and the right gradation of color – the violet-purple-pink of an amethyst or the definite violet or violet blue of some sapphires with maybe hints of red.
I generally turn first to my tubes of violet in my box. It might be Light Blue Violet, Muted Violet, Quincridone Violet, Interference Violet, Permanent Violet Dark, Cobalt Violet and Ultramarine Violet. I add various tints to them as I search for the right color shade to go with the feeling..
The actual flower – the Violet – and its pretty name, have inspired melodies and verse – the Italian Violetta or the Old French Violette which is a diminutive form of Viole. And there is Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Josef Locke’s Hear My Song, Violetta, had many prior versions, including a 1937 Austrian one: Hör’ mein Lied, Violetta.
There are also many prior and post versions, too, of the verse: “Roses are red, Violets are blue…” such as the lines written my Sir Edmund Spenser in 1590 in The Faerie Queene:
She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowers, that in the forest grew.
And in my THE WORLD OF GLIMPSE, Gregarious, with his….
Circumrotating head
Which spins round
Collecting information….
is the source of the violet light in the multi-colored rainbow which stretch-arches over Glimpse.