Week #18, Thinking in Color: Blue I

Dusti Bongé, Untitled (Black Form with Blue & Brown Ground), 1988, mixed media on paper, 13” x 10”.

This month we will revisit our Thinking in Color series, inspired by Dusti Bongé’s works in our current exhibit at the DBAF, by celebrating the color blue. Often cited as many people’s favorite color, there might be some reasoned evidence for this preference.

Blue is considered the most commonly perceived color on earth. So much so that the entire earth appears as a blue planet from space, hence the nickname “blue marble”. There is verifiable evidence of this even when not viewing earth from space, when you consider the following facts.

First, over 70% of the earth is water. Second, when hit by sunlight tiny air molecules in the atmosphere scatter shorter (blue) wavelength in all directions much more efficiently than longer ones, giving the sky its familiar blue hue. Third, this overwhelming blue is in turn reflected in earth’s water surface. And finally, human eyes are more sensitive to blue. Hence the dominance of blue.

Dusti Bongé, living on the coast, surrounded by water, open skies, and a mostly sunny environment, subconsciously must have absorbed this blue presence in her work.

In this piece Dusti lays down a wash of luminous blue with hints of violet, cocooning a translucent brown center, accented with orange, and lightest at its core. Against this, Dusti introduces a pure black hexagonal form floating in the upper right. It in turn seems to cast a shadow to its lower right.

The impenetrable density of this black form is jarring against the translucency of the field of colors beyond it. Indeed, this hexagon appears much like a black hole from which light cannot escape. As such it is a brusque interruption of an otherwise lustrous color-scape.