Paintings by new gallery colorist

Charles Emerson’s paintings are often composed of impossible combinations of vibrant colors that ease into a reverberating harmony. Color most simply is light of a specific wavelength, but commonly we understand color as a signifying attribute of a thing—a red shirt worn by an actor. In Emerson’s paintings, color is the actor and the shirt, the hero and the protagonist, the plot and the subplot, the set and the footlights.

For Emerson, color is also metaphorical. He draws inspiration from the Northwest landscape, which he understands as being animated with life, spirit or soul; rocks have life as well as trees. The dynamic use of color becomes a metaphor for that spirit or soul.