E-mail Dialogues

Here are some responses to the occasional 'Question of the Day'. Send your own thoughts or questions to editors@constable.net

Can transparency exist without color?

Mary Vernon, Painter, Professor, SMU
There is no answer here that does not lead to another question, and that is why it is interesting. Responding, no doubt, to Wittgenstein's famous dictum that there is no transparent white, Binney and Smith, the producers of Liquitex, have made an acrylic transparent white. It seems to be a white with so little opaque matter in the tube that the acrylic medium is acting as the transparent matter.

Is that acrylic medium in that tube transparent as glass is transparent? Does the pane of glass in the window have a color? Is literary transparency transparent enough for your definition?

Jon Laspinas, Painter/Conceptual Artist
Transparent pigments. The refractive indexes of pigments are very close to the index of the paint vehicle. They are used to provide bulk, control setting and contribute to the hardness, durability, and abrasion resistance of the paint film. Because they are commonly used to add bulk to other pigments, they are called extenders. Most transparent pigments are natural minerals reduced to pigment particle size. Among the most commonly used are calcium carbonate (ground limestone, whiting, or chalk), magnesium silicate, bentonite clay, silica, or barite (barium sulfate). Transparent pigments often constitute a substantial portion of a protective coating.

White Pigment. These pigments are essentially transparent to visible light. Because of the difference in refractive index between the pigment particles and the vehicles, white pigments refract the light from a multitude of surfaces and return a substantial portion in the direction of illumination without significant change in its spectral composition.

from McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology- For Trans. Pigment, vol 10, page 312; White Pigment, vol 14, page 60.

W. Karl Watson, Painter
Color can be transparent. Watercolors are transparent. Glazing in all painting is a series of transparent layers of paint. Glazing is what creates translucency in oil, and to a lesser extent in acrylics.

It depends on what you mean by transparency without color. If you mean a natural substance which is completely invisible such as a gas -- that gas is transparent -- but we still see the local colors of what at the given location. This is how we see -- we respond to certain wave lengths of light and perceive through various levels of contrast and visual editing (gestalts). Therefore, there is always color (the caveat here is including pitch blackness a color).

However, in painting there is always a color. Either the "unpainted" color of the ground (canvas, wood, whatever) or the painted ground on which the is eventually made of as it eventually may relate to the"figure/ground" relationship if it develops. One exception to this is maybe when an overpainting occurs. Say for instance one does a figure painting with a heavy impasto and then, after the paint has dried, changes it to a landscape. The figure may show through. It, ironically, may be transparently solid. Show through, but not be seen except as a matter of surface texture. It would in effect be transparent -- ironically again -- almost gas like. There, but not seen, only sensed in a secondary fashion.

Building random surface texture like this is called scrumble and can add a tremendous amount of energy to a painting. David Parks comes to mind, in this regard.

On returning to / finishing a painting...

W. Karl Watson, Painter
I think your question of the day depends on how the artist tends to work. If the artist tends to be less definitive about how a finished product will look, he or she will view such changes as an opportunity. However, if the artist has a clear visualization of where the painting is to go, such changes would have little effect. Neither way is superior. The danger for the first type of artist is to avoid overshooting the best end result. Change for change sake is not always the best idea. The danger for the second is closing off the opportunity to improve upon the original vision. Sometimes it is good to start with an idea -- no matter how well it is seen in the mind's eye -- and let it develop as the painting is realized in paint according to the conditions in which it is painted.

Jon Laspinas, Painter/Conceptual Artist
The painting is finally finished as soon as the artist dies; otherwise, it is not finished.