Winter’s Desire

This project, began in April 2013 is about time-keeping.

Debra Ramsay captured time passing by documenting the change in color within the landscape at the same location (New Berlin, NY) over the course of a year. The artist thinks of each painting as a landscape; a pure landscape, reduced to the actual found colors, transposing a specific landscape to a new location, in an abstract form.

For this project, she returned to a specific trail in the forest during spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each time, taking a photo every 100 steps. 18 photos were taken on each walk.

Once back in the studio, Ramsay would mix colors with the aide of a program that interprets the color selected from a photo into a paint formula.

The use of a system decided how this painting was going to be made.  Debra Ramsay used the 18 colors from the “winter” segment of the project “A Year of Color,” organizing them according to value (degree of light/dark). 

While working on this project the artist is reminded of Josef Albers' statement: "There is a profound harmony in the immeasurable spectrum of color."