Artwork

Eight Paint Pots

Eight labelled acrylic pots lined up in colour order on a shelf.

Eight Paint Pots: eight labelled acrylic paint pots lined up in colour order on a white wall shelf
Eight Paint Pots, 2003. Acrylic paint pots on shelf.

About this work

The name on the label of each paint pot describes how children connect things with colours.

The jars are ordinary art-class acrylics, but their colour names — rice field, mountain, grass, frog — turn a paint-by-numbers palette into a landscape of remembered places.

Close-up of a single acrylic paint pot labelled with the colour names rice field, mountain, grass and frog
Detail — the label names the colour after a place, not a pigment.