Leaning into Colour

By Adrian Capps

​I have been trying to paint for a while, trying to find something that feels natural and honest. Eventually I decided to stop fighting against my instincts, developed through a graphic design career, and asked myself what it might look like if I leaned into it instead.

Seeing the work of Agnes Martin was a turning point. That quiet precision gave me a kind of permission to think about what painting could be for me. Grids, colour, colour relationships, how you might create a sense of depth through colour alone rather than through perspective or representation.

Two theorists have been useful companions along the way. Hans Hofmann described "push and pull", the idea that colour relationships can generate depth on a flat surface, warm colours advancing and cool ones receding. Josef Albers spent a career showing how colours behave differently depending on what surrounds them, how they talk to each other. I have been trying to pull these ideas together with my own instincts for composition.

The experiments happen on cardboard, a waste material I have in abundance, primed and gessoed into a workable surface. Acrylic because it dries fast and lets me think quickly. Simple geometric forms, circles, rings, squares, because I want the shape to get out of the way and let the colour do the work.
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I don't know yet where it leads. That feels about right.