Shades of Grey

Carl Jung, the father of deep psychology, used to say that everything that can be named is because we know its opposite. We know for sure that the opposite of Black is white but…What would be the oposite of grey? There is no opposite of grey as there is no opposite of pink. Grey is what it is called achromatic neutral, but after working with this color for a while, we realize that there nothing like accurate to call it achromatic. Painters know that grey is important. And has so many “colours” or shades as others called more noble colours.

The painter Gerhard Richter once said that “Grey is the epitome of a non-statement”, and produced several group of grey paintings, atracted by his “neutrality”, during the 70´s. He also said that “To me, grey is the welcome and only possible equivalent possible for indifference, noncommitmen, absence of opinion, absence of shape”.

Nobody looking at the Guernica would say that or would use words as indifference or noncommitment. Grey is strange and magic…. It can be rude, poor o light and colorist. It is deep inside of us in so many ways and describes feelings that would be impossible to do without its presence.

I have been diving into grey colour the past weeks, looking for righ combinations for my grey soft pastels and I have to say that it has absorved me. I don´t think that grey is neutral… a colour without strenght, where near white looks dirty and near black look weak, and that does not come to represent the middle ground between the two, but mediocrity… I rather choose to see his richness from his discret role in the big creations, in the skies, backgrounds, even in the old grisailles, hiden under the colours, always helping black and white, those anthagonists, to love each other in that “second plane” …