But what is it supposed to be???!! Well, how does one paint emotions?

When I was asked to write a piece on the paintings

in the Rothko Chapel, I was at first quite

chuffed. I mean, the man painted amazing large

pieces of colourful and strangely thought

provoking ''colour field'' paintings.

I don't know what I had expected but from the

outside, the Chapel looked more like a bunker than

 a Chapel. Unassuming. Modest.

As I walked in to the gallery/chapel I was immediately

''touched'' by a wave of something, something

intangible, something that I can only describe

as ''non-specific emotions''.

Placed in the middle of the octagon shaped chapel

were simple wooden benches and on

the walls hung a number of different sized

and shaped unframed ''black'' canvases.

There were no spotlights, only a soft, diffused 

natural light from the skylight.

I did a quick walk around looking at the paintings

and then sat down on one of the benches.

I didn't get it. What was the deal???

Considering that Mark Rothko's use of expressive colours

 and space was what had attracted me to his work, 

I was puzzled as to what thoughts and emotions

 could have contributed to the making

of these huge black paintings.

I decided that I had to try and open my

mind wider, to try to stop all the biased chatter

swirling about loudly in my head and

just allow the paintings to ''speak'' to

me.

Slowly the chatter diminished in volume

and I felt a kind of stillness come over

me.

In the stillness I suddenly remembered

something Mark Rothko once said:

''A painting is not a picture of an

experience, but is the experience.

I'm interested only in expressing basic

human emotions.''

Emotions. The word reminded me of how

I felt when I came home with my freshly

acquired book of Mark's work.

It may seem ridiculous, but although the

paintings were not ''real'' but mere

photos of the paintings, each image I

looked at flooded me with emotions.

I decided to have another look at the paintings

in the chapel but this time, I was going to

allow my emotions to do the ''looking''.

While my eyes were gazing back and forth 

across one of the large black paintings,

I suddenly noticed that I was overwhelmed

with emotion and in that moment, the 

painting ceased to be black.

It became an experience.

Sometimes it can be hard to verbalize

our emotions and perhaps there may even

be emotions for which we don't even 

have words.

Standing there in the chapel,

filled with emotions I had no words for,

it dawned on me that perhaps this

was the very purpose of the chapel.

A non-denominational chapel/space for people

to visit for their very own

reasons:

 for reflection, meditation, prayer,

mourning, comfort, solitude, peace.....

to find themselves, to go beyond themselves.

When I finally walked out of the chapel

and into the sunlight I felt

as if I had traveled.

Traveled into, out of, and through....

Somewhere,

 I never before had traveled.

If you don't know who Mark Rothko is/was,

I recommend you to look him up.

Here's a little taste:

''Mark Rothko (1903-1970) belongs to the generation of American artists who completely revolutionized the essence and design of abstract painting. His stylistic evolution, from a figurative visual repertoire to an abstract style rooted in the active relationship of the observer to the painting, embodied the radical vision of a renaissance in painting. Rothko characterized this relationship as "a consummated experience between picture and onlooker. Nothing should stand between my painting and the viewer." His color formations indeed draw the observer into a space filled with an inner light. Rothko always resisted attempts to interpret his paintings. He was mainly concerned with the viewer's experience, the merging of work and recipient beyond verbal comprehension.'' 

 

(This is my feeble attempt at doing a colourfield

painting. It's just a small painting on paper.

And it's only to give a little clue to what it is.)

What is important to know about colourfield 

paintings is that they are REALLY hard to do.

They look easy but they are not.

It takes a deep understanding of how colours interact

 with each other and it involves numerous layers

of thin paints. 

But most of all, it's about painting something

intangible such as an emotion.

The above image is made on a pad just as an illustration

for the story.

I just imagined having visited the Rothko Chapel

in real life. Sadly, I have only visited it artificially.