All of our member artists (plus a couple of excellent helpers) worked together to refresh our space with a light neutral wall color, and new contrast wall colors. Every bit of art, pedestals, and furniture needed to be moved and protected. It was a big job. The results give us a great start on spring—the “light and bright” look feels great.
Choosing the paint color was a classic color theory experiment. As you know every color is affected by the colors surrounding it. And, there is actually no such thing as color, only how the spectrum of light effects pigment as it falls on it. So the many types of light, natural and LED’s, shadows and more brightly lit, affect every wall differently.
Small paint swatches look completely different when painted in large swaths on the wall. It took five different paint samples to get the look we were going for. In the photo above the swatches on the walls are to help determine our contrast wall colors.
As we painted swatches on several walls of the gallery to test the colors we found visitors to the gallery had strong opinions! All the way from “art looks best on white walls, go with the lightest one”, to “I only think art shows well in galleries on very dark walls”. We love the feedback, but in the end what we chose fell somewhere in the middle. We lightened up, but kept the walls a neutral background for our art, that is easy on the eyes.
The gallery was closed for two days—day 1 to prep and day 2 to paint—every wall and molding was prepped, primed and painted. We are tired but feel rejuvenated by the results. And we had a lot of fun working together on this project.
Learn how to paint luminous art with individual instruction. Katherine Taylor is now taking students, beginner to advanced, for private instruction in oil painting. Contact Katherine for more details and to schedule a time.
David Kinker spent 11 days this summer on a river expedition in northern Mexico near the city of Chihuahua, starting with a two day drive at 15mph over mountainous terrain. “We
