Color Balance

"Color Balance: The Paintings of Felrath Hines"

Felrath Hines was one of the leading African American abstract painters of the late twentieth century. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, Hines subsequently trained to become a paintings conservator. He worked for several museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

In so many of his works, Hines takes what appears to be simple objects or subjects and produces works that speak to us in many ways. They raised issues that reveal Hines's strong intellectual interests as an artist. For instance, in the painting called Image that he did in 1958, Hines brings us into the central part of the picture then presents equivocal shapes that suggest both near and distant space. He uses a light, warm, neutral color to define the delimitations of the top and right sides of the painting. He uses binary framing devices and also ambiguities with respect to the spatial definitions that are unique to him at this time in his career.

One of Hines oldest painting was done in 1958. Once you take a look the painting named "Yellow on Yellow" by Hines, you would see where it got its name. At first glance it looks like an the artist just painted a whole canvas area yellow. But many fail to realize that it is a painting of a sunset and sun. The colors of the top half had a rhythm to them. All of the curves went up and down at the same rate and it seems pixilated to a point. The value of the entire painting is very strong. Then when the spectator looks at the bottom half the only thing you see is a yellow blob, with can be taken as the sun. The contrast difference is low at that point, but yes you can tell the distinct difference.

In most of Felrath Hines paintings you can tell that he likes to use colors that are similar to each other on each piece of art work. He also likes to use very basic shapes and lines to create some of his best looking art works. In the painting "Aquatic Adventures" you can tell that the form of the lines make it symmetry to balance out the colors. Also in the art work "Kellylike", you can tell the distinct variation of colors used. He used three simple colors which were red, and two different tones