Fragmatism® is an artistic style I have developed in my art practice.
The style is based on the concept that our perceptions are often a compilation of reality and experience. What we remember is a morphed idea of the truth. Images disintegrate and fragment on the picture plane. Objects decompose and merge into one another.
Colour combinations are restricted, intended to create an emotive response or reflect a particular mood.
to capture mood through
heightened sensations of
form and colour.
is derived from the cubists
deconstruction process,
the orphic explorations of the
Fauves and the Nabi’s endeavour to
synthesise nature and aesthetics.
Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786 – 1889) was a French chemist who outlined his theory of simultaneous contrast in ‘The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours and their Application to the Arts’ published in 1839.
He identified that our eyes automatically balance a colour by manipulating the adjacent colour to be seen as its opposite. He noted also that the brain exaggerates differences in order to perceive them better for example, two samples of the same tone, one lighter and one darker, are placed side-by-side the lighter sample will appear even lighter and the dark sample even darker than if they are viewed separately.
His theories would go on to have a major impact for many artists who focussed on colour theory in their work such as Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat and Vincent Van Gogh.
