Sing a Rainbow: Sara Hughes

This Spring, Gow Langsford Gallery Lorne St will exhibit a new collection of paintings by Sara Hughes. Sing a Rainbow (17 September - 11 October) continues Hughes' observation and study of colour and perception. Hughes' embarks on extensive research for each body of work she produces, her paintings becoming charts and data vehicles for colour studies, which have often focused on global issues of economic growth and demise, illustrated using finance and crop harvesting models. Hughes' latest project concentrates on the development of visual systems in children and has been inspired by her young family. In the statement below Hughes' gives context to her new collection which explores a development each of us once experienced, the discovery of the world as we view it. 

"I have an ongoing concern with the complexity of colour and relationships between colour in art and colour in everyday life. My upcoming exhibition Sing a Rainbow draws upon aspects of infant vision and the development of colour sensitivity and depth perception in babies, topics I have recently been influenced by from watching my two young children develop their visual systems. I have been fascinated to watch their visual world develop and expand and to notice how they respond to visual changes and detect patterns. These new paintings are influenced by seeing the world through their eyes. 

Spraying paint instead of applying by brush has allowed me to touch the surface of the works lightly; the pigment flies through the air gently landing and building up fine layers. Masking and revealing has allowed me to build up contrast and gradation. The materiality was an attempt to work with the elusiveness of colour and to echo Walter Benjamin's sentiment from his writing on 'A Child's View of Colour'.....that colour is "a winged creature that flits from one form to the next."

Sing a Rainbow written for the 1955 film Pete Kelly's Blues in which it is sung by Peggy Lee. The tune is now synonymous with children and learning colours, even though the colours in the lyrics are not all in the rainbow. The deceptively simple words of the song allude to a more than optical and meteorological phenomenon and it is this elusive quality I hope to catch in my works.