From blue to rose to yellow; in the tiny hallway, the cool ultramarine and caput mortuum tints were changed out for raw terra di Siena, to add more warmth to the pompeiian red (already in itself a gentle, warm earthen tone).
In the kitchen, a light first colourwash with red was through the following layers turned to a pale clear yellow; one final layer of ultramarine violet, almost invisible, closed the circle.
colour samples, translucent beeswax paint
Follow the daylight; that is, where the morning sun comes in, colour should bring out its bright, warm character. Noonday light is sharper and may need softening and modulation according to the room’s size and its use. The light of the setting sun, again, has yet another quality; here it reaches into the livingroom and the bedroom with their greyish rose/blue shades.
From blue to rose; here, colour design is based on two pigments, ultramarine and pompeiian red; different proportions make different colours. Add caput mortuum to cool the red, or cinnabar to heighten it. A smaller room will concentrate the impression, while a larger room enlargens. Follow daylight.
pompeiian red, ultramarine and caput mortuum, second layer
Performing colour design and wall painting in a private home; Mats, my employer, keeps Nina Simone, Procul Harum, Joni Mitchell and The Band turning on the record player while I blend beeswax binder with pigments; Miles the cat is listening and watching.
This is colour exercise on a larger scale. At a certain point – by the third layer or so – colour becomes present in the room as a body of light, changing with time.
For professional services in colour design and painting, please contact: helenahildur@telia.com (or leave a comment below)
For basic information about layerpainting indoors: http://www.fargbygge.se/
For Joni Mitchell singing an experienced version of Both sides, now :
breathe in/breathe out; wax crayons on paper, each app. 21 x 28 cms
“There is a way between voice and presence/where information flows.”
(Jelaluddin Balkhi, known as Rumi; english translation by Coleman Barks)
colour exercise; wax crayons on paper, app. 15 x 21 cms
Sigrid Winkler works with the students, studying metamorphoses in nature, while I attend another NUrope oasis. This time it is held in Åbo/Turku (Finland) and Stockholm, during five days. I do small colour exercises – another kind of metamorphosis – while listening to lectures and talks… and my focus is on the NUrope process itself, rather than the (interesting) subjects treated. Just like art, this is a self-defining learning process. Unlike the individual artist’s work, it involves quite a number of people. I listen and learn.
(see also page Nomadic)
calling Apollo; construction with armoury irons, dyed silk fabric, rope and thread, 5 x 5 x 2,5 metres
Finally, it’s there: a zikkurat (since one of us, Ayad, is of Iraqi origin) built in fairly cheap and easy-to-handle materials (since we couldn’t hire a thousand construction workers from Kuweit) to honour the honey-coloured light. It has been hard work, and pure joy.
Measuring and dyeing.
iron construction with dyed silk sample
Gathering in the morning in the Blue atelier; now we are beginning to close up. Since each one of this small group has been working independently during the last weeks, we now share experiences and show pieces of work. When our friends and colleagues return to school next Tuesday, we will welcome them by displaying what has been achieved – in the two chosen sites as well as in the greenhouse situated between them.
Before leaving for the weekend, we recreate the Symposion: each student has in advance read one of the speeches which constitute Plato’s story; no one, though, has read the whole text. We take turns in referring the different views on Love: the young man’s and the more experienced, the physician’s, the comedian’s and the orator’s tales; they are all retold and, through the referrer, become altogether contemporary. I improvise Diotima, the old woman, speaking through Socrates – before the symposium breaks up… in the text by the arrival of Alkibiades, in our group just by quiet dissolving into private life… but we are not all finished yet, we’ll meet on Tuesday. So, until then: thank you all, so far!
Another day under the sun. At times, this is a logic construction stretching towards a radiant sky while the plummet is a silent reminder of weight and matter – at times, it is rather a sprawling chaos of armoury irons and steel wire. A salamander slips through the dry grass of last year and stays a short while.
Helena Hildur W. 
