Heavy Metal Halloween
©2009 Craig Ashby
Digital Photograph

Heavy Metal Halloween is called that for obvious reasons. Color choices often have go to mental imagery. It is that constant associative mind.

Black and orange is always Halloween. Red and green for Christmas. Pastels for Easter. They are hard to avoid mentally.

Color choices also remind me of time. Black, white and red are always so eighties. Where the nineties conjure images of flannels in a myriad of colors. I specifically think of my green and blue flannel jacket.

The double 00s make me think of blue and orange. A return to complementary color schemes based on the logo for he company I worked for. It felt like a return to me.

The teens for me are just black, indigo and white. Occasionally a grey. All dark colors. All darkness all the time. I have really learned to pair it down tremendously.

But in paintings I just throw it all in. The color range is huge. It never really reflects the person I have become. Or maybe it shows some interior person I really am. Maybe it’s all just fractional.