Artist Empowers Humanity by Reinventing Classic Portraits

Artist Kehinde Wiley is restoring power and respect to humanity through art. How? By reinventing classic portraits in a way that honors black individuals. Wiley believes art—particularly portraiture—is power. He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “What is portraiture? It’s choice. It’s the ability to position your body in the world for the world to celebrate you on your own terms.” With stunning vulnerability and bravery, Wiley reworks classic paintings so that they include black and brown-skinned people as the main subjects. For example, Wiley reinterpreted Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps by replacing Napoleon with a camouflage-clad black man. The made-over portrait places the black man in the same position of influence that Napoleon held. Now, that’s power.

The True Role of an Artist

What is an artist’s role in society? Should artists primarily make things look better, prettier? Kehinde Wiley doesn’t think so. He believes artists should think about “what they can do to start a broader conversation about presence and imminence and the desire to be seen as respected and beautiful.” According to Wiley, an artist’s role in society should be one that facilitates the redemption of the beauty of humanity, regardless of race. That’s why he’s pouring his blood, sweat and tears into transforming masterpiece paintings into works of art that feature individuals of black and brown skin tones. Wiley says, “I understand blackness from the inside out. What my goal is, is to allow the world to see the humanity that I know personally to be the truth.”

Kehinde Wiley Makes Mugshots Beautiful

Mugshots are not typically thought of as beautiful; they are most commonly associated with shame and punishment. However, Kehinde Wiley sees them as something entirely different: a type of portraiture. Wiley turns mugshots into portraits that subtly broadcast a person’s vulnerabilities, fears and dreams. This is just another way he is displaying the humanness and intrinsic importance of people who are sometimes overlooked by society. Wiley refuses to overlook these individuals. He wants the world to see them for who they really are: humans who deserve to be respected and understood. Kehinde Wiley has a pretty good idea of why he is alive and what he was born to do. He says, “My job is to walk through the streets, find someone who’s minding their own business, trying to get to work, stopping them — the next thing you know, they’re hanging on a great museum throughout the world, and it allows us to slow down and to say yes to these people, yes to these experiences, yes to these stories.” Please note: the photos featured in this blog post are NOT the property of Segmation.

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

Artists Bring the Streets To Life with 3D Art

The World’s First Tetrachromat Artist

An Artist’s Story of Taking Risks and Staying Determined

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Can Changing Your Diet Alter Eye, Skin Color?

It’s really happening: some people who follow raw diets are claiming that over time, their eye and skin color change.

Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram, who blogs for FullyRaw, claimed in a YouTube video that her diet turned her eyes from dark brown to hazel, and she swears that blue is not too far off. Skeptics are scoffing, but she’s not the only one to make this assertion. According to Conscious Nourishment, a popular raw food blog, Steve Factor, “The Pure Energy Chef,” has noticed a gradual color change, too.

Carrillo-Bucaram, known among raw foodists as ‘Fully Raw Kristina’, said in her blog that eating a raw vegan diet not only cured her of the hyperglycemia that plagued her since childhood, it also changed the pigment in her irises. She consulted an iridologist, who told her that a poor diet creates toxic buildup that is reflected in the eyes.

“The cleaner you become, the cleaner your eyes become. I ate fully raw and I allowed my body to cleanse itself naturally,” she said, believing this caused the change in eye color.

Although no studies provide solid evidence for such claims, many raw diet aficionados and alternative healers believe that brown eyes signal the presence of toxins in the body, while blue eyes represent good health. They assert that when a person becomes healthier, their irises gradually turn blue or even light gray due to the body’s regeneration of new cells.

The effect of diet on skin is less controversial. It’s a running joke that snacking on too many carrot sticks will turn your skin orange, but there’s a real basis for this lighthearted warning: hypercarotenemia, or carotenosis, is a light orange skin discoloration resulting from high levels of carotene in the blood. It’s caused by eating high amounts of vitamin A, which carrots have in abundance.

Isabel Marant, the French fashion designer, says that she drinks carrot juice to give her skin a healthy glow. She told Harper’s Bazaar, “It’s true. I’ve noticed that I tan easily without being in the sun when I drink a glass of carrot juice.”

In 2010, Dr. Ian Stephen, who has studied the way a person’s face can affect how others perceive them, researched the connection between skin tone and a healthy appearance. He and his assistants discovered that a diet rich in certain fruits and vegetables, such as carrots, cantaloupe, and tomatoes (which are high in carotene) result in a golden-hued complexion for certain study participants.

“Most people think the best way to improve skin tone is to get a suntan, but our research shows that eating lots of fruit and vegetables is actually more effective,” he said.

Eating a lot of fruits and vegetables can improve your skin tone and may change your eye color, but it will definitely give you more energy, improve your digestion, and reduce your risk of developing heart and cardiovascular disease. That alone is enough to adopt a healthier diet. Blue eyes and a natural ‘suntan,’ should you experience either, will be an added bonus.

Read more Segmation blog posts about art and color:

James Ostrer’s Junk Food Art

Food Never Looked So Good

Coloring Each Season with Healthy Food

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Use Color to Bring Your Home to Life

Most people would agree that color has the ability to bring something (or someone) to life. For this reason, nearly everyone who has a home uses color not just to decorate with but to create a certain ambiance. Some individuals long for the beach cottage look and opt for cool, neutral tones reminiscent of the Oceanside. Others desire a Southwestern feel and choose tones that are warm, open, and inviting. No matter the personality a person wants his or her home to possess, color can create it.

One of the most popular colors to decorate with is brown. Brown can really warm up a large space and set an atmosphere of “hominess”. People often love brown shades because they are rich and earthy. Brown tones can encompass anything from beige to dark, rich mahogany. Rose, yellow, orange, and red are the shades that comprise the color brown. Numerous shades can be used as accents to brown tones. Some of the most popular color combinations in homes today are a lettuce or celery shade and chocolate, or coastal blue a darker nut shade. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about using brown in a color scheme is that it is so versatile and goes with many different types of décor.

Orange is a color that is becoming better known for its ability to bring a sense of happiness to a home. After all, who wouldn’t feel better by simply entering a room painted with a beautiful, captivating shade of a sunset? The brightness of orange can really create a sense of identity for a house or a family. Some accent colors that look especially great with orange are blue, turquoise, and even various shades of pink, such as watermelon.

One hue home decorators never seem to tire of is green. Green is a calm, cool color that sets a mood of relaxation, peace, and serenity. For these reasons, bedrooms are often painted shades of green. Green can range from a very pale spring green to mint, lime, avocado, hunter green, and olive. Green looks fantastic with colors such as pink, lemon, and bright lavender.

Never underestimate the power of color – it can change someone’s mood and transform an older, dingy-looking house into one fit for royalty. What moods do you want your home to evoke? Once that is determined, it will be easy to choose colors that will both beautify and enliven your house.

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How Well Do You Know Your Colors?

Have you ever wondered how we go about distinguishing color? Have you ever considered why we call a color by a certain name? The world we live in is saturated with color. All throughout the day our eyes work to distinguish the various hues of color we come in contact with.

The human eye can distinguish over one- million colors. Most of us are familiar with basic color classes,

• Achromatic Color terms: Black, gray, and white
• Primary Color terms: Red, blue and yellow
• Secondary Color terms: Brown, orange, green, and purple

However, these eleven color terms only make up a small percentage of the colors we humans are able to see and identify.  Is there any system we can use to name and organize the million plus colors that don’t automatically fall into the basic color classes?

In the 1930’s and 1940’s the British Color Council attempted to create a structure for naming colors.  What they came up with is viewed by some as slightly confusing.  For example, the British Color Council chose to use terms such as squirrel and bee eater blue to name colors.  What colors come to mind when you read these terms?  Do you think that others would agree with you or do you believe they might interpret the terms differently?

Currently, there exists a more scientific structure of naming colors.  A set of 267 colors exists that are named, or described, using familiar color language.  For example, this scientific method combines words such as, light, grayish and red to create a name for a color that we all might be able to identify easily in our minds.  Yet, a set of 267 color names is still only a small percentage of the colors our eyes can see distinctively.  Is it possible to create a more extensive set of color names that can be collectively agreed upon?

Think about the word you might use instead of light yellowish brown.  Did you come up with words like tan or khaki?

Now consider how you would scientifically define some commonly used color names.  Start with the color name puce.  Does purplish brown work?  What about the color name ocher?  Did you come up with a phrase such as, dark yellow or dark golden yellow?

The process of naming over one million colors seems to be more complicated that it appears.  Visit http://www.colormatters.com and take part in their Global Colors Survey to test you own color naming ability.

Images made available by Marian Kraus Photography Inc.

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