Holland Color

Phil is in the bedroom taking a nap. April 27, 2020, overcast and almost 50 degrees out. Good time to write some thoughts on color.

I turned on an old PBS program of Bob Ross painting. Four baby fox squirrels climbing all over him and a friend. So many of us, so alike. Now painting a happy scene.

The title of his show. Happy Painting. Of course! Just heard him say, “Indian Yellow”. His paintings are all about diverse colors playing together.

I was so lucky as a young child. My Pop was a chemist for US Rubber during WWII where I was born in 1943. We moved back to Holland after the war and he got a job right away at Holland Color. His goal now was to develop pigments for the auto industry of Detroit. The very town we’d just left.

At a young age, I so often went with him to the lab. A lab full of all the stuff necessary to create all the colors of the rainbow.

I was like a tiny Bobwhite Quail that had just exited its calcium carbonate shell that had once held it safe.

Now, free to imprint on all the colors of the rainbow in the lab.

I bought this color wheel from the owner of the Color House when they closed

"I'm not deep!"

We are in the midst of this virus that's been able to shut down the whole world. A strange time to be opening an art website. An artist whose creations are coming from the knowing I find myself expressing in written form.

In these past 33 years I've been called 'deep' 100's of times. People are expressing what they perceive . A kinda gut statement. Before thinking.

I've given a lot of thought to their words.   "You're so deep!"

First of all, I don't see this as a compliment. Nor as a put down. Rather an inaccurate description.

I am not deep!

Rather, I've found myself taken deep. So what I write and speak are descriptions of what I've seen down there.

Down there?   Up above?   

You gain a particular way of seeing when you've been taken deep, flown above.  At the same time. 

Do you understand?

How different.             Being deep

                                             vs

                             Having been taken deep

How much of my life story, I chose of my own free will? And how much of my life was chosen for me?

True for each of us. True for the Whole Human Family. The Whole Earth.

With this interconnected world, this virus has enormous power to disrupt everything. So like an alien entering our atmosphere.

So in the midst of this, I will continue to blog and populate my website with my art.

Trusting The Invisible Hand of the One Whose Made All Things-to continue forming each us, all of us.   At the same time.

The Godfather Premier - 1972

We went to The Godfather premiere March 15, 1972.

We went at the invitation of Marlon Brando to go in his place in protest of how American Indians were represented in Western films

"Only good Indian is a dead one." That was the mantra back then in these movies I grew up with.

I knew this was important so I had a studio portrait taken in the dress I wore and how I looked. The off white coat is the one I wore into the theater.

We exited our limo and walked up the red carpet just like in the movies. We went to the cast party afterwards and I remember that no one talked with me. My white skin in contrast to the dark skin of my husband and Bob Jim, Chairman of the Yakima Nation. Back then interracial marriages were rare. None of them wanted to hear how we felt. You’ll find nothing on us even being there.

This is the reason Littlefeather refused The Oscar for Marlon Brando a year later.