I
looked at ruins with no color except the earth-tone browns
and aging grays. Drab, nothing but crumbling rock. And
yet....there were tiny specks of color here and there,
buried, but to the examining eye, colors nonetheless.
Gauguin
said, "Paint what you see." If you see a pink
horse then paint it pink. And so the world was introduced
to pink horses. Emboldened by Gauguin, I reached for my
brushes, poured out the colors, and began to paint in
colors that captured the "feeling" of the ruins
for me.
I
squinted my eyes to see what the colors would look like
in the dark. The abbey would have to become dark and foggy,
for this was the spot where Dracula came ashore in the
book by Braum Stoker entitled Dracula. It was on a stormy
night that Dracula came disguised as a huge dog on a ship
steered by a dead man strapped to the wheel. Up the stairs
the dog ran...up toward the abbey. It is said that this
scene from Dracula was the scariest storm scene ever written
in literature.
Would
the color maroon in the dark foretell of fear? Perhaps...perhaps
even more so than the innocuous browns and grays that
appeared in the abbey. From the minute unseeable colors
in the rock I gave life to the abbey in opposition to
Dracula who took life from those who dared to visit there.
Rock
crumbled everywhere, shards of pieces, tumbling into each
other. To paint each and every one could have taken a
lifetime. I simplified, I reached for the shapes that
needed to make a statement. I obliterated pieces of the
abbey that need not speak. The simplification, gave the
essence of shape and color.
