A Wolf Kahn painting!

The Morris is currently prepping for Wolf Kahn Pastels, an exhibition of more than twenty pastels by Wolf Kahn, which will open September 11 in the museum's Coggins Gallery. 

One of America’s premier landscape painters and a master of the difficult medium of pastel, Wolf Kahn is undeniably the greatest colorist of our time. Color is his signature, and he has this to say of his work.

In the painting, Wolf Kahn differentiates the colors accordingly. He uses warm colors to paint the foreground and cool colors to paint the background. The color he uses to paint the foreground (the barnyard) is orange-yellow for the roof, white for the left sided wall where else the front wall is a mixed color.

Well for the background, Wolf Kahn uses cool colors to paint the background so that the viewer’s eyes will recede on the background and will have more attention on the foreground. He uses a green-blue for his background. In the painting also has a middle ground which is painted with dull colors.

Moreover the colors he uses are directly opposite from each of them on the color wheel. Since the colors are directly opposite from each other it creates an extreme contrast on the painting which draw more attention on the foreground. contrast is to set in opposition in order to show or emphasize differences and that's exactly what Wolf Kahn implied.

Beides that, Wolf Kahn also uses the "chiaroscuro" technique to shape form applying gradually light to dark values and also multiplying colors on. As we can see in the painting. the left foreground (the barnyard) walls are differentiated using chiaroscuro technique. As on the left sided wall it is painted white where else the front wall is white with other colors multiplied on it.