ome time ago I came upon a chapter title that struck me to the quick in a work by Yukio Mishima. I had been working for a while on a series of drawings that were becoming ever more tedious just as I was becoming ever more frustrated. I could not wrench myself out of using old ways to address new concerns. Consequently, the efforts looked and felt forced: certainly they seemed self-conscious. Then I came upon this phrase in Mishima’s book: “Forbidden Colors.”

As such things happen, what was elusive and murky one moment became utterly clear and fully formed the next. It was now apparent to me that my stuckedness wasn’t my failure to use well what I had; it was a failure of my imagination to allow me access to the full range of possibilities (of color, this time) within which whole new domains of thinking and gesture resided. The problem was, I had forbidden myself to employ a range of colors (it could have been lines or shapes or what have you) that could speak of things I wished to say but could not convey without those colors.

Forbidden colors indeed! I was not interested just then in knowing why I had cut myself off from this other world; that I had forbidden myself certain sights and uncertain pleasures was impetus enough for me to change all that. And I did. I closed the book, drove to the art store, went right to those Pandora’s trays of pastels, started at the top drawer and pulled it open. There they were, dozens and dozens of tints and shades of one color. The first tray happened to have all yellows. Sour yellows, cool yellows, citrus yellows, bitter yellows. All there, innocent, feigning sleep. I went right across the silent columns in the tray. If a color repelled me, I took it. If I had never used that hue or tint or shade before, I nabbed it. A handful of forbidden yellows!

Then on to the next tray. Ah, greens. Nasty python greens, celadon sublime greens, bean greens, greens wanting to be blue, dirt greens, eye greens. Again I snatched these forbidden beauties and shoved them in my bag. Now blues, then browns, and reds, even a tray of grays. I ravished them all. It cost me a fortuned in their purchase. It had cost me a fortune in their denial.

Then back to my studio, the great sack of forbidden colors now jammed altogether under my arm. The hubbub they were making in there! An expansive sheet of open-faced paper tacked to the wall, the bag of colors opened, I plunged my hand in.

Who would be first? First one, then others eluded my grasp, but my fingers finally closed on a somewhat slower one, I had it by the scruff of its miserable neck. I withdrew my hand, and there it was, a cylinder crammed with the palest blue. So weak, fragile, and self-effacing, hardly blure at all. All the usual brashness of blue drained away. If it had a place in the sky, it was at the edges of the day, maybe a late August morning after a steamy, heavy night. A tired sigh of blue. No wonder I had never bothered with it before, the puny little thing.

But now, on closer inspection, there was something quite appealing in its shyness. You could get close to this blue without being overwhelmed, slammed in the face by its blueness. There was a feeling of failed aristocracy here. Appealing to me, a lad originally from Brooklyn. Well, now to touch it to the paper, see what will out. And I did.

© 1989 Peter London. Reprinted with generous permission from the author.