Kaffe Fassett - Kaffe Fassett in the Studio: Behind the Scenes with a Master Colorist

A fabric collage of my large florals, cut and applied to a patterned background with fusible web.

PART ONE
Studio and Home Life

PART TWO
Studio Work

PART THREE
How To

In my lectures and workshops, participants often ask about my house: can they visit? I have to discourage thisId never have time to do my work if I had to entertain visitors! So, I thought I would write a book that attempts to show my creative spaces and processes. This book aims to satisfy that curiosity about the flow of color that comes from inside my house.

I started my adult life with the firm conviction that I was going to be a serious fine artist. The plan was to paint whenever I could and convince galleries and buyers to show and consume my work, affording me a living. When I first moved to London, I didnt find this too difficult. With the optimism and energy of youth, I painted or drew most days and attended dinner parties and country house weekends. I met enough people to keep a stream of them visiting the studio with the occasional buyer. London was cheaper in those days, so the sale of one painting could pay my rent for a month and keep me in the humble caf food and groceries Id cultivated as a sustainable lifestyle. I usually dressed in charity shop or flea market finds, so expenses were definitely controlled. The sale of a painting a month or a commission to illustrate a book or magazine article could keep me going.

After a while, the socializing and charming of potential customers was getting harder to sustain and doubts about whether I was good enough as a painter, an affliction that affects most artists from time to time, started making this lifestyle more arduous for me. There were days when I could not find inspiration to motivate my creative projects. Paintings took up room to store, they were a problem to ship to galleries and overseas customers, and framing was expensive.

Then, I discovered textile making: first knitting, then needlepoint, and eventually patchwork. Each of these was a way to create pools of color that became a very visceral part of ones life as opposed to paintings that were just hung on walls. Textiles could wrap around you, be sat on, cover you cozily in bed or when watching TV, andthe biggest bonus for meI discovered I loved the process of creating a textile. I was motivated every step of the way. Knitting always fascinated mehow the two needles and colored yarns created this magic web. And needlepoint was a simple way to create more complex images. I found I could make bags, slippers, and belts as well as cushions. But, for me, the best of all of these was patchwork. To create designs quickly from squares of colored fabric was an instant thrill. I also started creating my own prints that I could share with a world market. All textile making is just another way to play with color that is at the same time deeply therapeutic to do.

I dont think there is ever a day when I cant face making a textile. The hard thing for me is to leave my studio and go out to lecture, teach, or break off to write something like this! To sit at the end of my studio, surrounded by yarn or piles of fabric, and dream up a new design is what satisfies my soul. BBC Radio 4 keeps me informed and amused while I contentedly while away the hours, spinning some magic new combination of colors into existence.

So, color has become my subject and the motivating factor for watching TV and films, traveling, andbest of allcollecting good examples of color usage in vintage textiles and pottery.

Obsessed as I am by colors power, I often call my house a color lab, yet Id never label myself a color expert. Color is such a gigantic enigma, changing and revealing different possibilities each time one concentrates on it for more than a moment. The average person, particularly in Western cultures, seems to rank color quite low on their list of significant priorities, which accounts for the predominance of grays and beiges in fashion and neutral preferences in interiors. That said, the pale, neutral world of sea-washed stones, weathered wood, and graying hair does have an intense beauty to which Im often drawn.

People who have overcome their nervousness of using color, and begun to perceive its inherent ability to enhance lives, tap into my fascination with it. To them, I dont need to explain why it is so high on my list of priorities. The people Ive come across who really get me often are those who work with color.

I remember meeting a tall man in a wallpaper factory who was mixing a huge vat of yellow paint to be used on one of my designs. He was standing over a container three feet deep with gallons of paint and needed to adjust the yellow color from lemon to a slightly dustier tone. Taking a stick, he dipped it into a small can of black paint and dropped a few dribbles into the sea of bright yellow. After a stir, he saw that a depth had entered the yellow, knocking the brilliant edge off it. I was so impressed at his casual handling of the stick. I knew from experience how easy it would have been to ruin many gallons of expensive paint.

Looking from the painting studio through to the landing. A drooping collage of flowers on the door was for a bag printed for QuiltMania in France.

How did you know how much to use? I asked. Did you train professionally?

No, he replied. I just watched my father, who had this job before me.

Gardeners often seem to tune in to the range of tones of the plant world, be they bright or subtle. A good flower arranger is a true artist, in my opinion. Im inevitably struck by the small arrangements Ive come across in India and Balipicante mixtures of shapes and colored blooms that linger in my mind as a painting does. When a garden is planted by a sensitive eye and you catch it in its prime season, it is one of the most life-enhancing experiences. The older I get, the more Im in awe of the natural world in all its seasons. Blushes of wildflowers on a hillside in spring can thrill even the most neutral fashionista, but even winter, with its almost ghostly hued remains of flowers and grasses drained of their bright vitality, can have a delicate beauty.