Cadmium orange against grey (revision).

Cadmium orange straight from the tube is basically a loud noise. It doesn't sit still, it demands to be looked at. Next to a warm grey, though, it stops shouting and starts glowing. The grey absorbs all the aggression, gives the orange somewhere to live.

I was testing colour chips for a piece about the light on a brick wall at sunset, and I put a swatch of cadmium orange next to a grey I'd mixed from raw umber and a tiny amount of ultramarine. At first I thought it was too dull — that the grey was deadening the orange. But I left them there and came back after a coffee, and the orange had completely changed. It wasn't fighting for attention anymore; it was radiating from inside. The grey was letting it breathe.

I spent an hour just painting small blocks of grey with different undertones — a cool grey, a greenish grey, a warm brown-grey — and putting cadmium orange next to each one. The warm grey made the orange feel like sunset, the cool grey made it feel like traffic lights at night. Same pigment, totally different mood.

I'm going to use this in the piece about the brick wall. I'd been trying to mix the orange down, mute it with white or yellow ochre, but it never looked right. It looked like I was apologising for the colour. The grey isn't an apology — it's a room with good acoustics.