I have an affinity for black and white, whether it's old classic films, especially Film Noir, or crisp black and white photography, which renders even the most realistic of subjects a beautiful design of positive and negative space. There is a simplicity and yet and a complex undertone in stripping the world of colour. The brutality of the past is both softened by the lack of colour, where blood is merely rendered a dark shape, and yet becomes all the more stark by reducing it to a place in the imagination. Consider the bleak, Depression era photography of Dorothea Lange and her poor, struggling subjects. Also please Google Kathe Kollwitz and her haunting and haunted subject matter. And take another look at Picasso's "Guernica". And the silent film, "Nosferatu". Black and white can often render horror much more intensely than the richness of colour. Even in modern film, black and white often makes a statement even more unsettling than the world we see around us. Check out "Pi" (my computer won't make the symbol for Pi) by Darron Aronofsky. Unless you just want to curl up with a nice cozy murder mystery. As I often do.
I have used the limitations of black and white before in artwork and in my sketchbooks. My series Absolutely Your Zen adhered to these rules by following each letter of the alphabet and only rendering each letter in black and white. Artists do indeed need rules. They also need chaos. It's that whole dichotomy thing.
Anyway, I bought a new Moleskine sketchbook and decided to keep it black and white. Doodle doodle doodle. Well, artists also know when to violate rules. Even the rules of art. Yes, Art does have rules. And one of those is that all rules are meant to be broken. I only have a few pages done but already I have strayed and introduced neutral beige and a shot of bronze metallic paint. Those artists. So unpredictable! This is why we could never serve in the military. All that questioning, all that outside the box-ness, all that independent thinking......
We all play our part in this world.
