Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices

instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking

into the heart of the night. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Color is a prime ingredient of every single thing we see and a big part of our language…but it doesn’t get credit for how ‘primary’ it is. I’m a little bit obsessed with color. I have a lovely book titled On Color (David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing) and just acquired a new one, as yet unread, The Secret Lives of Color (Kassia St. Clair). The latter described thusly, “The unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them.”

Sister-in-law Marsha is a gardener par excellence, especially of flowers she plants and waters and weeds and nurtures in plots and pots all around their Minnesota house. I think of it as growing colors.  How about a series of photos of them enlarged and mounted for a wall here and there, I thought.  Walls of primary colors.  

I don’t have the idea perfected yet but here are a few starting photos. The concept was to have pure color…the flower as color rather than as its whole being.