“Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbors and changing conditions.”

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color

 

I am always testing new color relationships. Seeing what happens at the edges when two colors meet gives me great pleasure.

 

I use the bare-bones structure of a house as scaffolding for my color investigations. The house form is at once iconic and open-ended. The primitive nature of the shape allows me to use it abstractly, breaking up color by working in blocks of four.  I choose four colors that I think will be active, then put them together and see what happens. I play with variation in the amount, repetition, and placement of color to see their effects. I am always solving an aesthetic problem with my color choices.

 

Although the house remains a constant in my work, I play with it over time. I recently learned that Henry David Thoreau’s family purchased a house only to put it on wheels and move it from one part of Concord, Massachusetts to another. So now I have put my own houses on wheels. The idea of taking a solid house, attached to the ground, and letting it roll away seems both comical and deeply suggestive of our times.

Ann Schaumburger lives and works in New York City.