Make Art or Die Trying

Chapter Nine

Colour

A DIRECT LINE TO YOUR EMOTIONS.

Ever since I got a glimpse of Van Gogh’s (Dutch, 1853–1890) Sunflowers at the National Gallery as a kid, I have been totally and utterly obsessed with the power of colour, whose history is a wild ride of espionage, ground-up mummies, black square, white paintings, and epic battles. Nothing really stirs our emotions the way colour can. And, in the right hands, artists across the ages have wielded it to transform the very way we look at the world around us.

A COLOURFUL PAST

Did you know that up until the 1500s we didn’t even have a word for the colour blue? It was like it didn’t exist. ...