The Yellow of Delight
How deep earth can catch the colour of sunlight
Like many here, the end of last year was a busy time when writing slipped into the background and making time for friends and family became the priority. As I sat down to write about my materials again, I wondered about the relationship I have to them and the feelings that keep me returning to earth pigments and natural surfaces in spite of the vast array of options offered to any creative person. The ingenuity of people to create is certainly awe inspiring and, for better or worse, the sheer vastness of human ideas is staggering.
For unique perspectives and sheer wonderment though, I think the materials that come into being totally outside of human concerns are the most magical because they have completely their own independence and their own purpose. The delight I find in a dialogue with a material that has a story outside of the human realm is a spark I have the pleasure of discovering again and again. These materials are a potent reminder that to step outside of the human perspective is the fastest route to the awe that comes with contemplating the complexity and vastness of the universe that our minds simply can't really grasp. And although there is both comfort and terror in the letting go that must accompany really knowing that you'll never know much, there is so much space for poetry and appreciation.
With that in mind, I turn to a holy lump of Tennessee yellow clay. Disturbed during pipe laying at a roadside rest stop whose sign commemorated the home of a nearby country singer, it sat on the asphalt of the parking lot seeming to embody that wonderful contradiction that country music also holds- of the romance of the broken and unvalued.
As I look at it now I see how its colour is the earthly sibling of gold. The yellow of ochre is so distinctly different from the plant pigment yellows like weld, with their glorious butterfly pale hues, that it feels as weighty as metal in comparison.
When only the memory of sunlight is still in the slim silhouettes of lingering grasses and seed heads that accompany this time of year here, their whispering songs remind us that light too is transient and can encompass within it both the levity and weight within change.
Yellow ochre's earthiness is undeniable but that such brightness can be found under the ground is a painted reminder that the layers of earth shift constantly. That grains of soil that feel like they have been hidden forever have often only been away from the kiss of the sun for an instant if you're thinking about geological time
If iron deep red is blood then yellow is the spirit. Hopes and dreams given shape by the forces of the body but not quite of it. If the fairies or other spirit world folk had a colour then I think it would be yellow and the particular earthy gold hue of yellow ochre. It knows the flow of iron and yet is maybe too drawn to the stars and moon to be embodied enough to wish to grasp the depth of red.
It is the colour of flame, particularly the far away light against an autumn deep blue sky that speaks of every possibility in the universe. It beckons like campfires and fireflies and is magic in a colour. It is the last warmth of summer from the cold underground. Smoothed into earth, becoming honey once more when added to water. A fingertip dipped into this muddy pool of sunshine, of honey, of gold and candlelight, is a finger that can make a mark that drinks from the sublime well of thousands of years of human eyes seeing all that is beyond our understanding and yet so beautiful we know it is one with our souls somehow.