Can we live without color?  A few years ago I wrote a page for my website about how artists in a bad economy should not forget about graphite and pencils.  My high school teacher taught me a simple life-long lesson- if you can't draw it, you won't be able to paint it.

When I got hit by lightning, I lost my color perception.  One appointment with my doctor was especially both rewarding and heartbreaking.  After hearing about my painting and thinking, he said "You are like Vincent.." and he was about to finish "Van Gogh", but as soon as I heard "Vincent", my heart was beating double-time.  Vincent van Gogh has always been my favorite artist, since high school at least, if not earlier.  He could paint orange and green and make you see a rainbow. (Do not mention Thomas Kinkade to me, may he rest in peace).

For at least 20 years I headed down a path similar to Vincent van Gogh's, although I didn't plan it.  My doctor is the one who confirmed I hear color instead of seeing it, and he said that a use of a slight dissociative disorder that I have enabled me to put the colors aside as I heard them and painted.  Joy at having a professional "brain and thinking" doctor tell me something I guess I knew all along.  I understood Vincent van Gogh truly, whereas it took me about 20 years to understand and appreciate Picasso.  I think Picasso was painting math, while Vincent was singing the world.

The heartbreak in that doctor's appointment was that we were determining that I had actually lost my perception of color since getting hit by lightning.  I left that appointment thinking I would work in different color media until I got my color back.  That was at least a year and a half ago.  I can work in color, and I know how I did it before - BUT - I now hear color in gray.  When I would start an oil painting, whether abstract or traditional, my use of color was a satisfying pattern.  It was like baking a cake- I could do it in my sleep.  Did I mention I don't sleep now? lol- I don't reach REM sleep anymore since the lightning either. I dream while I am awake, my brain shuts down every once in a while, but it isn't when I am trying to sleep.  They are calling this epilepsy.

I have spent the last week going through some of my paintings, in oil, oil pastel, pen and ink of course, gouache.  I think I have found that I hear in gray and then if I were to use color now, I am transcribing the grays into colors. Steel Gray.  My world is steel gray.

As I work on depicting the near-death experience of the lightning strike, I had found already that the "tunnel" I saw when the event happened was gray.  It wasn't white like some other people have described, mine is gray.  I say "is" because I think that we each have a tunnel- a way to heaven when we die.  I believe I saw mine when I got hit by lightning, that I held onto having my son and staying here, I lost the ability to speak, and lost my previous perception of color before I saw the tunnel, when the lightning hit the right side of my head..

And now, my page on graphite is calling to me.  It isn't a bad economy that has me leaning toward simple materials and gray scales, it is being struck by lightning.  Where does a colorist who thinks like Vincent van Gogh turn when the world turns gray?  Metalpoint, and a literal use of gray.  Steel gray metal on gouache or marbledust, rabbitskin glue and wood.  I don't want to transcribe my world, I want to draw it directly.  I always have preferred to work "from life" instead of models, and trying to assign colors to a gray scale is not how I want to work.

The above photo is how I hear color now.  The same photo below, in color, is a noisy conglomerate of mush to me, someone else's painting.

I did a couple of things using a steel stylus yesterday- steel gray in the literal use is a very light-colored material.  Much lighter than copperpoint or even goldpoint.  I'm worried that if I work in steel only, I will always be trying to add the contrasting darks instead of allowing the light to be enough.  We will see...

If you are interested in working with metalpoint, you can see my pages here.