Chroma (text)
By Amnaj Wachirasut
A conversation.
A: I feel color. My color is my reality.
N: Can you get away from the depth and darkness of the past years? Can you challenge yourself and walk into new territories? Something you have felt in real life but haven’t expressed in your art.
A (ignoring N): I like to see a wide and wild landscape or go through a tunnel where I know there is a very far end.
While working on this series, and exhausted with your rules and comments, I would go for a walk in the park. The natural setting made me feel free. It’s part of me and always be.
N: I wasn’t that bad, was I?
A (ignoring N again): Through my new work, I can sense a new opening, direction, and interpretation. My color is my reality. It is how I see and feel things. I use surroundings that soothe me as a tool to express color. It’s factual. It’s mine.
Note – This conversation between A and N never happened.
…………
The above is partly a made-up conversation that has become the core of Amnaj Wachirasut’s latest series. It is about color and perception. Is it possible to not just see, but feel the color? How can a person describe that feeling and have the recipient understand it when perception is personal? Will others see, and possibly feel, the color as you do?
There is a relationship between color and emotional attachment. Take color theory, it is not just about the color wheel and combination, but also about human perception and interpretation of colors. Words like harmony, trend, warm and cool are often found as part of the theory. Those words imply other senses beyond vision. Many art lovers who have stood in front of large paintings by Mark Rothko occasionally mention the otherworldly experience received from these great works of art. ‘To describe them (Rothko’s colour-stacks) merely in terms of pleasing colour combinations … is not really to describe them at all. …[B]oth of them (Rothko and J. M. W. Turner) masters of dramatized atmospherics, both of them dematerializing the scenery… Rothko’s colours have that same quality of airy, oxygenated vitality; they tremble with it. … (his pictures) seem to move off the wall and into our space, coming to get us.’[1] Simon Schama’s on Rothko.
Other color perceptions happen involuntarily. People with synesthesia will simultaneously experience one sense from the stimulus of other sensory or cognitive pathways. These conditions affect around 4.4%[2] of the population. There are many variations of synesthesia. Some of the most common conditions involving colors are grapheme–color synesthesia – when people experience letters and numbers in colors, and chromesthesia – when sounds cause a person to see colors. This is a fascinating perception phenomenon, in which the colors that are seen by synesthetes, even though real in their senses, are not perceived by others. One’s reality is not shared by others.
Human perception is fascinating and complex. It is subjective, and not easy for others to judge or understand. You are unable to see what the others see or feel what the others feel. Being a painter, Wachirasut is fully acquainted with the nature of paint. He feels the color as if we can feel our own skin. He likes oil colors due to its characteristics and its association throughout the history of art[3], along with its earlier use of natural pigments.
In Chroma, Amnaj Wachirasut explores the color palette in all its diversity and qualities. The colors used range from black and white, to bright red, to pastel. When Wachirasut works with colors, it is as if he orchestrated it. He simultaneously manages the colors as they appear on the surface. It is an ongoing process of consideration and adjustment using his personal sense to guide each color combination.
‘The higher the saturation, the more intense and purer the color. Adding white or black would soften or deepen it. Many colors are transparent, so I need to keep applying each layer on top of another to get the result I want. Many times, I add other hues to create a more complex gradient that will subtly appear in the finished work through different lightings. Some colors can be atmospheric creating depth through their reflective and shiny surface. I have been using lampblack for this effect, and in this series, ultramarine is also a good color to emphasize a gloss texture,’ explained Wachirasut, on his color and painting techniques.
When asked about the switch from his previous black/white and green series to the present, he stated a connection that, for him, followed the same linearity. ‘When I was working on black, I liked it because of its atmospheric quality. It creates depth and mystery in the work. Combining it with an olive green, you have a combination found in nature. In this series, I mainly just expanded on a bright white light or a black field. Think of an infrared camera capturing details at night. We can bring out something that is truly there but cannot be perceived with our own eyes.’, said Wachirasut.
Wachirasut’s works may sometimes look abstract, but they are actually drawn from his surroundings and experience, an extraction from settings he finds pleasant and soothing. This can range from the natural setting of a wide landscape or a park, to a personal experience of going through the tunnel, or reading a story that will lead him somewhere new. The sense of place and experience is then combined with the sense of color. His working process normally starts with a selection of colors and a rough plan for a subject. Working quietly with no distraction, through each layer of paint, he completely lets his mind and feelings guide the whole working process. The work is gradually transformed until Wachirasut feels it is finished and complete.
In Field of the universe, viewers may see a surface that looks like a top-down view of a pond covered with lotus leaves. The shade of green dominates this painting, creating a realistic and refreshing feel of nature. In this set of work, the artist chose to gradually change his range of colors, following mood and emotion. Wachirasut loves walking through the park in the evening during the brief period when day turns into night. The sun starts to set, creating atmospheric rays of light gradients that captivate people with their beauty and emotional acceleration. Raenu lyrics no.1 and 2 are about how Wachiraust sees and feels the light reflection, beauty found in mysterious and nostalgic sensations. Field of the cosmos and Pink temperament are more surreal, as if the color and feelings appeared in his inner vision. Viewers may not be able to understand this sentiment but can perceive it through the art he presents.
Wachirasut’s strength is how he uses the combination of colors to provoke the audience’s emotional response. Tunnels no. 1-3 lead us into mysterious tunnels ranging from a mixture of deep ultramarine and other hues, to a combination of striking orange and cadmium yellow, to various shades of white. Twilight and Lost star no.1 seem to present something of an inner-scape. Bright red dominates Twilight along with other hues like permanent rose and zinc white. While Lost star no.1 comprises a range of blues from cobalt, and ultramarine, to manganese blue. With countless ways for oil paint application, color combinations and techniques, Wachirasut is eager to explore vast possibilities. He aspires to reach the materials’ full potential to create a great work of art.
Some pieces in this series may not be recognized by some as being his. ‘I quite like the idea when people did not recognize myself in the work’ said Wachirasut. Nonetheless, these artworks can be traced back to his earlier practices, from the color used to the technique, as if he was rediscovering and reinterpreting working processes from the beginning of his career. Within the flat surface of Microspore no.1 and 2, there is still a hint of color variant and deepness normally found in his work. The reality of The sun and his son comprise the techniques he has applied to his earlier black and white series, while the focus on natural features creates a sense of melancholy and longing. Most importantly, these works, along with others, represent his latest journey through an exploration of the color palette into his own reality, feelings and growth.
For Wachirasut, Chroma represents life. Work in this series is a result of his mind and imagination, and a reflection of reality and the environment, deriving from psychological and physical sources. It is his exploration and reinterpretation of his artistic practice that is paving the way to developments beyond definition or limitation. Viewers can choose to reject his version of reality or accept it and let him lead us, through his work, into insights of his personal perception and new understanding.
‘We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colors as the only correct ones… The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass green… Now painters sometimes feel as if they were on such a voyage of discovery. They want to see the world afresh, and to discard all the accepted notions and prejudices about flesh being pink and apples yellow or red… It is they who teach us to see in nature new beauties of whose existence we have never dreamt. If we follow them and learn from them, even a glance of our own window may become a thrilling adventure.’[4] – E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art.
Nim Niyomsin
[1] Schama, S., “Rothko: The music of beyond in the city of glitter”, Simon Schama’s Power of Art (London: BBC Books, Ebury Publishing, The Random House Group Limited, 2006), pp. 418, 420
[2] Simner J, Mulvenna C, Sagiv N, Tsakanikos E, Witherby SA, Fraser C, et al. Synaesthesia: the prevalence of atypical cross-modal experiences. Perception. 2006;35(8):1024–33, cited in Baron-Cohen S, Robson E, Lai MC, Allison C. Mirror-Touch Synaesthesia Is Not Associated with Heightened Empathy, and Can Occur with Autism. PLoS One. 2016 Aug 4;11(8):e0160543. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0160543. PMID: 27490947; PMCID: PMC4973977.
[3] Oil painting gains its popularity in Europe during the 15th century replacing tempera paint. Nevertheless, the oldest oil painting discovered was from the 7th century in the village of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, near the Bamiyan Buddha.
[4] Gombrich, E.H., “Introduction: On art and artists”, The Story of Art, 16th ed. (London: Phaidon Press Inc, 2015), pp. 28-29