Art Galleries? I love to browse. I like that feeling of "Oh, Yea," as I walk out the door overflowing with a mind cascading with color patterns. Brown, black, ochre, red. Yes! I CAN paint.

Excitement....expectation......joy....walking on air...smiling.

8:45 a.m. It was with happy expectation that I entered the gallery of MY university. My eyes focused in on plastic bags hanging from an entire wall of the gallery, bags filled with dark...brownish...reddish liquid...leaking down the wall. My brain clicked through an array of explanations. Was this a display of how to store your leftover morning coffee? Or perhaps a statement of leaking garbage bags. The silence of the gallery was noticeable. I was the only "viewer", the only "admirer", the only "patron of the arts."

I turned to the only possible source of information, the "lonely person." A woman who had no other purpose in life but to follow me around and make sure I did not destroy such a work of art. "Excuse me," I said, "What is that?" My hand waved to encompass the expanse of the whole wall.

"Those are bags of blood," she said as if everyone left bags of blood hanging from their walls.

"Blood?" I cringed.

It was then that I noticed a sculpture on the far wall. It was a sculpture of Christ nailed to the cross.....and nailed...and nailed...and nailed. He was full of nails. A button underneath bore a sign that said, "Push me." I did. Christ writhed on the wall in agony.

A little cloud of doom and gloom encircled my head. I headed for the exit. The little cloud followed.

9:00 a.m. I was late for my painting class. The instructor stopped to critique my work. I swallowed hard and assured myself I could take criticism. I was excited. "Look at the colors," I glowed. "I learned all this in color theory class." She was appalled. "Color theory! It will ruin you. You must not study color, it must come from within here." She patted her abdomen. "Drop that class before it destroys what is inside of you." The only thing inside of me was an Egg MacMuffin and a Pepsi. I thought of how women of Parisian society had swooned and fainted at the sight of Impressionist paintings so full of light and color. I thought of Matisse and the Fauves....or wild beasts as they had been labeled...outcast for their colorful paintings.

Having dismissed my painting, with a wave of her hand, as being an "undesirable," my instructor praised the student beside me for his breakthrough in art. I walked over to see the glorious work. It had to be good, my instructor said it was. On the canvas was a doll...it's head had been chopped off...it's limbs lay ripped to pieces...an eyeball hung down distended from a spiraling cord. The color red was splashed everywhere. A saw with jagged teeth lay nearby. There was a figure on the canvas...a realistic likeness of a man.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"It's my father," said my classmate. "I hate him."
Amazingly I had already come to that conclusion. AND I now found out what it meant to paint what was inside.

1:00 p.m. Time for my color theory class. I opened my painting box and pulled out all my friends...cadmium red... pthalocyanine green...yellow bronze...aquamarine blue...burnt umber.

My instructor passed by. "I am depressed," I said. I explained about the bags of blood, Christ pierced with nails, the dismembered doll. It was all so...so...brown....and black.

He smiled, "Don't listen to them he said." Would a surgeon operate without studying medicine? Why should an artist have to paint without a knowledge of color?"

For the next 3 hours I painted a rainbow of colors. I was happy. I smiled...I laughed...I joked with my friends as we all learned about color. As the lights were turned off and the slide show begin my instructor talked about Van Gogh....Derain....Matisse....Monet.... Renoir....Gauguin and all their use of color. I was in good company.

7:30 p.m. A woman asked a question in art history, "Why did Monet's paintings sell better than other artists." "Perhaps," said my professor, "because they were colorful paintings, paintings that people could live with in their homes. Some paintings you might like but they would not be something you would want to hang on your walls."

I thought of the bags of blood. I thought of my nice white walls. My art history professor was right.

I dropped oil painting and found that color theory was the best class I have ever taken.

Can you tell the difference between "warm white" and "cool white"? "White is white!" you say. Not so sayeth the student of color. Not so at all. Does it really matter? YEP!

Copyright © 2008 by 47 Solutions, LLC All rights reserved.

You may reprint this article and distribute it, as long as you leave the copyright, content, author, website and this statement without any changes.