In the summer of 1970, I had been using acrylic for four years and had yet to find a way to develop color like a composer might orchestrate a symphony from a piano score.  (The symphonic was then my visual ideal.)  After the 106^th  acrylic of “majestic” size, I got real about scale—smaller—and switched to colored sticks of soft pastel so I could hold a rainbow in my hand.   I kept on with the streaming lines of the big acrylic paintings, but I filled the spaces between with the soft pastels. I called the new work The Dust of Paradise Harvest, and I made a Well-Tempered Spectrum (remembering Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier).  This Violet is the last of the spectrum series.  The whole series showed the mountains of paradise, the heart from the Western Homestead, and the winged sword of my masculinity—all in the streaming of colors of the waters of life.

The Well Tempered Spectrum
All are 48 x 24 in. unless otherwise indicated.
 

                 3.                                4.                                               5.                                           6.                                           7.                                   8.                          **9.
Left to Right:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Coll. Oakland Museum
Red (48 x 12 in.), Orange, Yellow, Yellow Green, Blue (48 x 12 in.), Violet.
 

Summer/Fall, 1970
No.s 10-15,  Pastel on panel, 18 x 18 in.
 

                                                                                    13.                                                     14.                                                    15.