Phases of the Sun

By Amanda Lomax

Piece description from the artist

With this piece, I explored working with colored pencils as opposed to my normal medium, digital photography. It was during the pandemic and printing labs were closed, ink was hard to obtain. I used this time as an opportunity to branch out with a new medium. Even though the medium is different, this work still holds my central concept of exploring color as a subject and the way it evokes emotion. Color was my inspiration for the piece – specifically the colors in an ocean sunset: yellow, red-orange and turquoise. I curiously played with variations on color combinations, substituting olive green for example, for yellow, or brown for turquoise. Delighted by the results, I presented the ocean sunset featuring my favorite three color combinations in each "vignette". One color represents the sea, and two colors represent the setting sun. I made very deliberate lines to suggest the shape of the sun setting over the water, taking special care to include in each sun, the meeting of two lines of two different colors. Just like in a sunset, the colors of the sun change so rapidly as it sets, that one color can instantly appear as two. To me, this expresses the magic of light and color. I hope this piece evokes for the viewer a bit of the awe and wonder felt while watching the sun set over the sea.