Old Year's Day.

 

 Selene Santucci.

Dear Time,

What a drag you can be, with your damn thresholds between the day and the night, the month, the year.  I am tired of you, even as I try to mark and honor you.  Well, what have you done for me, eh?  Yes, let's not and say we did, this New Year's.  There's not enough champagne in the world to make it a party anyway.

I think, what I will say, in truth, and with a minimum of resentment, is so long, it's been good to know you.

I learned everything I know about saying The Long Goodbye from singers and songwriters.  You can learn it too, in easy, online lessons.  Here are your course materials for Goodbye 101.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

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Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

Blue, blue, electric blue.*

 

Selene Santucci, Light Noise, oil on canvas, 2016.

Dear Students of Seeing,

I will soon be addressing and guiding a group of people through discourse and exercise in color, and I am thinking constantly about what color feels like, what it tells me.  It's not an easily verbalized thing;  it's more a startled awareness, a sharp in-drawing of breath, a sense of belonging.

 

Selene Santucci, Musical Effects, oil on canvas, 2016

 

Making Music, oil on canvas, 2016.

 

 



Do these blues hit you right there?  Do you want to run out and open your paint box?  I do-  I want to potter and dabble in blues like these:  the sky, the sea, the chenille bedspread, the faded book cover, the moth-eaten plaid coat, the blue that says "look at me" the blue that says "don't you want me, baby?" The blue of the white lie, the blue of the bird wing, Madonna blue, wildflower blue, the blue that says, "please keep warm."

The sages of color, Goethe, Albers, Itten, Birren, and Munsell tell us that a color is nothing without another color; that color is relative, and so we must remember to consider the ochers, russets, vermilions, and scarlets in these paintings as well as the blues. 

Italian Towns, oil on canvas, 2016.

If you are a lucky one, you can go and feel these myriad shades, hues and tints in the flesh, until the end of the month, at Gallery IMA in Seattle.  See more of the wonderful paintings on exhibition here.












* That's the color of my room, where I will live.