the colour of despair

When I was 16 I was thrust into the uncomfortable world of art school.It was a long way from my high school days in more ways than just geographical. I remember my first few months there very clearly.I remember them because at much as this very green student thought he knew it all, I simply didn't (what a shock). I learned a new way of thinking, a way that would shape my thinking till this day. I remember the first few projects the professors gave us. At first they seemed crazy and stupid and a total waste of time (because at 16 you simply didn't have time to whittle away..ha ha).I would go home at night after a very very long day at art school and work on something I called 'my work' till the very early hours of the morning. Later I figured out that all the work I did was MINE. So on that very cold 'northern English town' kind of morning I walked into my first real lesson and was presented with a box made out of wood.It was the size of a basketball only it was a cube.It was painted a flat black and looked very dull in a beautiful way. When I picked the box up and started to turn it, it made very strange noises.Sometimes a bell, then a spring, then a thud, then the sound of water, then the sound of rice or some sort of grains falling. The box never made the same sound in the same order.It was a complete mystery what was inside and a bigger mystery how it was made, even now I try to figure out how it was put together...
The lesson was to turn the box once and draw the sound. Then turn it again and draw that sound. The lesson was to record all the sounds in the box with an image. There were 25 sounds and we were only allowed to turn the box once a day, therefore producing an image a day, a 10 hour day. The project lasted 3 months and I produced a lot of very interesting images.I also taught my brain to think in a completely different way, or maybe it taught me. Which brings us to the image above. Sometimes between very large projects I like to go a different direction with my work (just as a mental exercise) and sometimes the result can be quite rewarding. I wanted to figure out what colour certain emotions were or places or smells or simply stuff. The colour of remorse, the colour of damp nylon sheets, fear, hurt, sadness, lies, pretense, nerves, talent, regret, failure and so on....I will spare you the process but I had 50 english beer bottle just laying around, so I thought this would be a perfect vehicle to present my new little project. I created this about 6 years ago.
So now I have to go into my studio and photograph 40 painting I did 30 years ago.It needs to be done , but I would sooner be working on my film.

I wonder what colour exhaustion is?