Color Schemes of "Human and Scholarship" Mural

The development of the color scheme for a mural to be produced in the SWARTS building (University of Pittsburgh at Bradford) requires that it should have all the characteristics typical of mural paining in public architectural spaces. The building is not only the home of the university administration, but also the location of the halls where numerous disciplines (19) are studied.

This fact itself suggested the color scheme formula, as was the case with the main idea of the mural design, presented last time.

Just as its composition consists of the three main geometrical shapes – carriers of the message –triangle, square and circle, the color scheme too should be equally fundamental.

A basic principle in the field of color theory, the only one of the same scope and significance, is the topic of the two types of color mixing – additive color mixing and subtractive color mixing.

I chose subtractive color mixing, not accidentally considered as the “element/territory/cosmos/universe of artists.”

Similarly to how the mixing of the three primary colors results in the endless diversity of spectrum colors and all other colors in nature visible to the human eye, the “mixing” (interaction) of thinking and creation results in the diversity of the human world created by art, science and technology, existing parallel to the world of nature and even attempting to surpass it.

The content of the social sciences and the humanities studied in SWARTS reflects the variety of people’s creation as if through the prism of a kaleidoscope, building layer upon layer during the process of learning in the form of numerous pieces of knowledge.

I chose the optical principle of constructing the color architecture of the mural because the works of art thus created always have a very strong impact on the viewer, being at the same time “the offspring” and “carriers” of light.

A basic characteristic of this type of color mixing is that colors are perceived as transparent filters layered one upon the other. On top comes the triangle (a symbol of thinking, which precedes the rest), followed by the square (the creation, the making), and the circle at the back (everything created).

I developed two versions of subtractive optical mixing, where the triangle and square swap colors – magenta and cyan blue, respectively, in which case the derivative (supplementary) colors are different as the result of placing them upon the lemon yellow circle.

The reason for this swap is based on the meanings of colors according to color symbolism, on the one hand, where thinking belongs with ethereal colors – light blue, and the activity of creation – with the warm, red color groups. Exactly the opposite takes place, if we adopt the color symbolism of gorintō, for example – the Japanese pagoda philosophy, expressing the five elements through the five basic geometrical forms, according to which the triangle is a symbol of fire, therefore colored in red.

The idea about how to place the human figures on top of these geometrical color “filters” is slightly different. I attempted several versions in which the two figures belong only to the color of the triangle, suggesting in this way that the making/creation is part of thinking.

The second series of options envisages for every figure to have the color of the geometric form to which it is assigned, thus suggesting that the making/creation and thinking, although related, are at the same time very different human activities.

The third series of color options is based on the same optical concept, but this time placed onto a white circle.

The last options represent pure color play – changing the color of the circle inside the background, according to the sequence of colors in the color wheel, moving clockwise, and the respective total change in all the other components in the two color formulas (with blue and red figures), based on the principles of complementary contrast. This kind of play aims to demonstrate just a small fraction of the infinite color possibilities of mural art.