Creating Roundism – 12-05-18

Website link: https://corneakkers.com/roundism-12-05-18/
Print: https://corneakkers.com/print-roundism-12-05-18/
Printable: https://corneakkers.com/product/printable-roundism-12-05-18/

Color versus Tonality

This oil painting ‘Roundism – 12-05-18’ is a sound statement. Quite often I tell my students about tonal values and that colors lack them. Colors have no values, they show only relations. Perhaps my painting 'Roundism - 02-02-18' is the best recent example of this theory. Painting this black woman I want to show the world something very important. Black is not a color to be found in skin hues. Black and white people do not exist. Especially people from African descendance show a variety of different colors. They show relations, such as cooler and warmer ones. I find this very comforting. No matter which colors you create, it has no higher or lower value than another one. There are only relations between them. Isn’t that comforting to know?

Black Lives Matter

In this respect the Black Lives Matter movement started in 2020, with all due respect, got it wrong. How emancipatory justified it may be it could better focus on all colors rather than calling people black. Meaning there are people opposite to black, namely white. I understood in the Roman empire there was no racial classification like ‘blacks’, ‘negros’, etc. Just as there was no real word for ‘gay’. People were called dark-skinned (niger) or for example ‘chlorus’ (pale). That was the nickname of a certain Roman emperor by the way.

Hope

Therefor I send out hope and the wish for discovering the true nature of skin colours like artists do. The very task that is bestowed upon artists like me it is. To show what’s hidden for most people all over the world. By the way, North European people, like I am, are not white but pink with lovely green shades. Ipse dixit!

Oil on linen (60 x 80 x 2 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers