Local Color

We learn so much from our conversations with our artists - about their artistic choices, their craft, their obsessions, and their ever-changing growth. One of the themes that invariably comes up is an artist's relationship to color. 

Here's what we learned from three of our artists - Carlos León, Jenna Spurlock and Alyssa Minko - each with their unique takes on the meaning of color and why they gravitate towards certain choices.

Carlos León's day job as a Color and Lighting Art Director means that on any given day, through rough sketches, Carlos is thinking deeply about the way in which color can inform story, say something about a character's emotional journey, set an atmosphere, a mood. Color can cue the viewer as to time of day, it can also set the stage for a conflict, for a resolution. It can tell us if someone is home. Which is why, when we got to talking about color, I was kinda surprised by his initial response: "There is a saying that I believe in - color gets all the credit but value does all of the work." And Carlos ought to know - he's been art director on films such as Soul (I remember filming him doing color keys for the Jazz club and NYC street scenes), Elemental, and Turning Red, among others. For Carlos, who is currently passionate about plein air painting, limiting his palette is a discipline that he is delights in. He loves the economy of it. And his go to tone - that rich rusty clay tone - is a nod to the first mark makers of the caves and the elemental nature of pigment.

Color can tell us if someone is home...

When I asked Jenna Spurlock about her vivid pink skies - a pushed hyperbole of our Bay Area dusk - she said humbly that she simply loves pink: "nothing intellectual about it, I just love it." But digging a little deeper Jenna talked about her roots, as someone who grew up in Florida, and for whom those bright pastels tether her to the magnificent natural beauty of the sunshine state. So inspired by the color, Jenna has said that at one point she'd decided her artistic project was going to involve painting every pink house she happened upon in San Francisco. She's still working on that project - there is an awful lot of pink homes here - a color that stakes a claim among the foggy grays of the marine layer. One of the things we love about Jenna's pink skies is the way that it evokes magic hour - that slice of the day when people are gathering, cooking dinner, getting cozy in their homes. Nothing says the world is quieting down so much as a bright pink sky - the day's final revolt of color before it dips to indigo. 

When Tony and I first met Alyssa Minko she was a vision in bright and earthy tones - a turmeric top and dusty clay red pants. For Alyssa, who speaks so eloquently about a childhood rife with chaos and violence, coming into a love of color was a long process, one that is connected to mental health and community. "I was kind of afraid of color once upon a time. I think being depressed and emo and an angsty child, like, I wear a lot of black. Color scared me." For Alyssa her expression of color, and her use of it in her paintings, was a process that is linked to healing, and to finding her community of artists among her Pixar colleagues. At Pixar Alyssa is a shading technical director, a job that involves imbuing objects - anything from tree bark to a spaceship interior - with color and texture. So she thinks about color a lot. A self-professed sunset-chaser, Alyssa's newly found embracing of color is still new, still evolving It expresses a love of nature and its ability to stop us in our tracks. It connects her to growth, to vibrancy, to positivity. To sunsets and sunrises. Color connects her to a tomorrow. As she so eloquently will say, color and her discovery of it through her art practice is inextricably linked with her daily process of "finding a reason to stay."