Bangladesh, 2012

The streets of Dhaka are an open-air gallery teeming with rickshaw art. Subject matter may vary wildly, but one emphatic consistency is color. Rich, saturated color. In your face color. Color combinations that stretch one’s imagination about ways colors can be synchronized.

While I don’t think I’m dogmatic about general, foundational elements of art-making (but then,who ever thinks they are dogmatic about anything?), I do have some training and experience with the codification of things like design and color theory, and that inevitably influences choices I make. On color, I learned about the color wheel and how every potential/theoretical color (hue, brightness, and saturation) can be placed in a specific definable position. I used the Munsell Color System to create a three color mix to decorate a box choosing a primary, contrasting, and complimentary color selection, in diminishing proportions, based on their relative positions on the wheel. In hindsight, that all sounds more like an intellectual exercise than art, but it’s the sort of education that is useful if you can avoid getting caught inside the lines.

So, I have been inclined to work with color over the years in terms of contrasting and/or complimentary, with a kind of visual “weight” deciding the balance of volume for each. Several years ago I was planning some spring planting for my deck’s clay pot garden, fussing a bit over color combinations, when a friend said, “For gardens and flowers you can mix anything and it will work OK.” I relaxed, tried it; she was right.

Bangladeshis apparently apply that color philosophy to all of life, illustrated here by the young woman’s outfit consisting of at least four very different fabrics/prints. Coming from a part of the world where the standard pant is khaki, walking around Dhaka is like stepping inside a kaleidoscope. It’s a rich, vibrant, chaotic, fascinating, hypnotic visual explosion.

I have mentioned previously, I’m sometimes surprised to find how many people pictures I make without realizing it at the time. True, once again, in Bangladesh and here is a new gallery “Faces, Bangladesh, 2012.” Go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000mEaxYnNexwQ