Before we moved to Dubai, I had never been here. The first thing that struck me at the airport where we landed, was the amount of golden shiny details everywhere. Historically, gold-tooling has been a large part of traditional bookbinding, in the skills of which I’ve had my due initiation as well. However I have always had some sort of aversion to using gold in my work, whether tooling or otherwise. It has felt a bit over the top, certainly not quite “me”. But as usual, I like to give myself the challenge to see how I might make peace with anything gold…
As there’s something golden everywhere I turn here, I have become practically desensitised to it now. In my visual thinking, gold has taken on the role of just another colour. I see details in all the colours of the wheel, just combined and mixed with gold here and there. As I have come to see it, where I live, gold is the fouth primary colour. Mixing it with different colours produces shine and shimmer of all possible tones. There’s red gold, green gold, yellow gold, purple gold, blue shimmer, orange shimmer, brassy shimmer, sparkly light tones and darker glows. Thinking of gold as one colour among the others, makes it more palatable for me, an additional tool to my palette which I’m just getting to grips with. Another artistic journey.