Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) by O'Donnell Rosie

Author:O'Donnell, Rosie [O'Donnell, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000
ISBN: 9780446199933
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2007-10-09T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The Sound of Color

I paint. I started after 9/11, started numbly, mindlessly, driven toward the canvas, toward whiteness I could cover with color. And since then, I have not stopped. Every aspect of painting pleases me, so much so that I want to do it at times over and above anything else. In my craft room I have tubes of Grumbacher oils, of Sennelier pastels, those bound wax sticks that, once pressed to the paper, leave behind a pure path of blue, or yellow. Saying it now, I can feel the color in my throat, behind my eyes, and sometimes at night, before falling asleep, I close my eyes and see the paintings I am not good enough to make—unfair, I can see them so well—the cobalt curls, the cadmium shapes blocked out and perfect. What actually is color? I could look up the explanation for that. But my question is more of the metaphysical sort. Animals don’t see color like we do. Their spectrum is narrower, and they get just these washed-out reds and muddy greens. So maybe, on some other planet, or even among us now, there are beings who can see beyond the spectrum. Maybe we are surrounded by indigos that are more vibrant than we can imagine, or reds that transcend red and are something altogether . . . what? Redder. Something. More.

I don’t need anything more beautiful than what I have now. What is color? I can answer that question for myself. Color, I believe, is God’s way of laughing, the liquid sauce in which he marinated his monochromic creations after he was finished. I imagine the first draft of our world was black and white, and God stepped away from his canvas, scratched his stubbly chin, and thought, “Hmmmm.” He adjusted his beret and took a sip of the merlot he always kept by his easel. Something wasn’t right about the mere mortals he’d sketched out. The faces were flat. The shadows looked like soot. The oceans were too tarry. What was it? He didn’t know. He drew a rainbow, black and white stripes, that, when he sighed with disappointment, suddenly leaped into light, into yellow, into violet—some shadows—and in a snap the world was alive. It was Oz, and, thus inspired, he went on to make Roy G. Biv, the acronym every child learns in school, but they don’t teach you it is much more. The spectrum is the original miracle, the pulse of our planet; it is fractal, fractured, illuminating. It is an utter refusal of flatness.

The Twin Towers had been flattened and the air smelled of smoke. I went to my craft room and squeezed some cadmium yellow onto my canvas. I remember that I was using Winton acrylic paint, pure pigment, devoid of the fillers that cheaper brands use. The paint glopped on and settled. It was thick, almost gelatinous. For a second I was scared. I had not painted in forty years, and as a kid I’d done it mostly out of art class obligation, the stick figures and square houses topped with a triangle.

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