Alexandra Loske

Alexandra Loske’s chromatic desires.

As a teenager I had a keen interest in the use of colour in art. My enthusiasm was fed by visits to the great collections of 20th century German art in the galleries in Düsseldorf and Cologne. I was enthralled by the work of Grosz, Kirchner, Klee, Richter and others. Some decades later I applied for a scholarship for doctoral study on colour in early 19th century interiors, based at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. I am especially interested in what human beings thought, wrote and felt about colour through the ages, and how this has been expressed in published works, art, and colour diagrams.

I started collecting books on colour, colour charts, vintage artists’ materials, and anything relating to putting an order to colour, initially as part of my doctoral research but now also because I love the timelessness and abstract quality of colour diagrams. An 18th century colour wheel is as intriguing to me as a colour installation by Olafur Eliasson.

I find certain colours particularly fascinating, and I always try to link my work to colour theory: for example, when writing a book about the moon in art I thought a lot about the colour blue, its associations with distance and longing, its closeness to black and the absence of light, and how it relates to the perceived whiteness of the moon.

I have been writing about many aspects of colour for more than a decade, and there is still so much more I would like to explore. One of my quests is to create a library of women colour writers. As is the case with many aspects of life and art, there are far fewer women in the history of colour than men. I have made it my mission to record as many of them as possible and ensure their work is included in exhibitions, lectures and publications.