Image Essay # 11

This is a painting by Hans Hoffman. In class we briefly talked about this artist, and after I saw a few of his works I wanted to look at more. This picture caught my eye for a few reasons. The first reason this painting caught my eye was because of the very bright colors, the very chromatic blues and reds. Some of the colors seem to want to jump off the page and hit you in the face. Also the colors blue, red and yellow create a triadic color scheme, which means these three colors are equidistant from each other on the color wheel. Also in this painting I liked how some of the colors seemed to pop out and yet other colors seems to recess and fall back. This is because the very bright chromatic colors pop out of the page. The more dull colors such as the pale blues and the pale yellows seem to recess and not have as much of an impact as the more vibrant colors. Because some colors are more vibrant than others it gives a great amount of depth to the painting. If all of the colors were the same vibrancy then the painting would look very flat and not have much dimension to it at all. This is a very exciting painting to look at because of these bright colors and the way they are juxtaposed on the page. Also, all colors look different when they are placed next to other colors. I was trying to imagine what this painting would look like if the red block of paint were juxtaposed against different colors.