The Color of Spring

Spring is a favorite season among many artists, as it is the season of rebirth, renewal, and new life. My personal favorite depiction of spring is “Almond Blossoms” by Vincent van Gogh, with its delicate composition and subtle brushwork, the branches of almond trees float against a clear blue sky. Spring is an alluring subject for the artist because color and light become a focal point, a mode of communication, and can take on symbolic meaning while also being beautiful and pleasant. Spring is also idyllic in its representation, yet paradoxically unrepresentative to the viewer. As a South Texan on the Coastal Bend, spring has always looked wrong to me in how it would show up to me in movies, paintings, and comics, and it's because it wasn’t the spring I knew.

We often think of images of flowers blooming, sublime green fields of grass as far as the eye can see, and birds singing their songs out of sight but always close by. This, of course, is not true for everyone, and especially for many Texans. Texas has a culture that feels unique in its narrative of its independent stature and in the multicultural blend of history. Which begs the question, what does spring look like in Texas?

Choreography by Marianna

For Texans, Spring looks different depending on where you’re from and the culture you grew up in. When I think of spring, I think of humid South Texas, the morning dew brushing your ankle on a chilly day, and the glow of the early morning sun reflecting on the Gulf of Mexico. In my mind, the color of spring is not green, but blue. For someone else, it could be yellow, the haze of pollen in the air (and on your car after you just washed it). Maybe it's violet when the bluebonnets bloom. However, one could easily imagine that the color of spring is not a color at all, but a vibe. Cars line up at the ferry for Spring Break, trips to South Padre Island, snowbirds completing their migration; spring is possibly every color and no color at all. If I were to create a painting that reflected my experiences of spring in Texas, I could imagine what it would look like. Cool morning with a hazy glow, the big blue sky pouring through oak trees, but that would only be my Texan spring, and it may not be yours, even if we come from the same place.

I had the opportunity last spring to do a close-up study of one of my favorite painters, Claude Monet. His painting, “Chrysanthemums” (1897), is a masterpiece of color control, and to no surprise, it was vivid in color. There’s something about standing in front of that painting, watching the colors move in and out of each other, trying to match what he was able to do with his paints, that my color pencils desperately tried to recreate, that made me realize he had the right idea all along. I reflected in my sketchbook how the color of nature isn’t just what we see but is all life itself. There is no one color of spring, of life, but that it's made of many colors, and that there is no amount of pigments that can capture it completely, but we must do our best. With that said, I want you to think about what spring looks like to you. What is the color of spring through your eyes?