by Christopher van Donkelaar
In places where people live closely with their natural surroundings they oftentimes develop a mythology of the landscape, in its different key elements, as sacred. Seeing the local environment as spirit-bearing is a significant theologically statement. Within such art traditions, the landscape’s very earth is remembered as the foundational connection to a place. This reliance on the local earth, as its colour, for creating a painting not only effects a work’s colour and specific techniques, but ultimately affects the very perception of the divine.
Every place that people live has a local identity, and part of this identity is local colour. This colour is significant within a region and can be best understood as a permeating indigenous material. The specific hue of a local colour can become synonymous with an historic, cultural or regional identity. However, in our modern epoch, we are less aware of these connections due to industrial interests and the consumeristic tendency to provide a repeatable brand which has made it all but impossible for our daily objects and materials to still connect us with such a local narrative.
To understand a place as colour, as is the case in local colour, we need to rethink our notions of impurities, convenience, and brand. While there is a good aesthetic reason to do so, the impact of local colour goes beyond this. Ultimately, it effects the very way in which live within our communities.