Recently I took a trip to the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. The current exhibition is titled In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet. Paintings rich in texture and detail line the walls in ornate frames along with early photographs containing ghostly images of the famed forest. What struck me the most as I meandered amongst the other tourists, listening to audio tours and chatting amongst themselves in the awed sort of whisper that accompanies the presence of fine art, was the use of color. Color wasn’t splashed about in bold shapes like a Picasso but rather used in warm tones that made the paintings glow with vibrant life.
Through color, the artists that painted scenes from the Fontainebleau captured the way light filters through the forest in a way that really just draws the viewer in. Light really is one of the hardest things to portray in painting or any art medium in general. The paint is laid on thick so the color just leaps out and all of a sudden I am actually standing in the forest path, sunlight filtering through the tree branches to gather in warm pools of light on the ground. It takes a lot of conviction to lay color out on the canvas in such confident strokes and dabs.
Joan Colomer painted the Forest and other landscapes with great attention to the way light made the scene. His attention to the sky brightens the painting. His work, After the Storm, is a perfect example of his amazing use of color. His work is naturalistic, there are no neon pinks to be found, but he uses bold color to attempt to capture the majesty of the moment. The setting sun illuminates the parting storm clouds with a red that zips off the page and hits the viewer with a marvelous and resounding smack. He then draws the viewer’s eye down to the bottom of the painting by the reflecting light of the waters surface. When color is used in a painting, in my opinion, it’s meant to bring that image to life. The paintings on exhibit at the National Gallery are a perfect example of that.

Joan Colomer, After the Storm
image found: http://www.bluehillbaygallery.com/p/colomer24x36.jpg