Well if you live in Seattle that’s a no brainer questions.
And as an artist I can tell you not only is there gray, there is a warm gray, a cool gray (which has nothing to do with popularity or the weather), a deep gray, light gray, blue gray, and on and on. I can tell you how to mix it and when a cool gray should be used verses a warm gray. What I can’t tell you is there is no such thing as no gray, in life and in painting.
Some people don’t believe that, they are sure there is just a black and a white. My Mom, who is 91 and knows a thing or two, once said for every rule there is an exception, or else it’s not a rule it’s an absolute.
Which was a little heavy for a nine year old to digest, but is true if you think about it. Is the sky blue? Well as a rule, in Arizona, yes. Except when it’s hot pink, or inky black or hmmmm, gray. Is the grass always green, no, (except in the other guys yard, then it’s green-er)
Even absolutes are not always set. Think about that flat earth thing that was an absolute a few of centuries ago. And less than few centuries ago, I had a science teacher tell our class there was not way man would ever reach the moon. Where would we be today if everyone just accepted these absolutes? How far would we have progressed?
Life is made of black and white and when they blend, you get a gray. And that gets people talking, and talking results in dialogue. Which is a good thing because dialogue is an exchange of ideas. (no shoe pounding on a podium please). An exchange of ideas can produce an increase of knowledge, and a change of ideas and thinking, which in turn can result in change of rules and absolutes.
So while I respect the absolutes, the black and whites, I also know that creating a dialogue about them is healthy and good. It always has been as it keeps the community growing towards a better, safer, healthier unit of people who in return, work together with the common goal of improving the community as a whole.
