I am a color junkie. It jumps out at me everywhere, and I think about it without meaning too. Primary colors are the basis for all colors, and when I began oil painting, I became even more aware of colors, particularly the primaries.

Red, yellow, and blue make up all the colors in the world. I have to add white for painting.  I’ve heard it described as the absence of color, the sum of all colors, the coldest color and some people refuse to call it a color. Doesn’t matter – it is impossible to mix colors without it.

The primaries keep appearing in my life. Early in my painting career, I was given the assignment to copy one of the old masters. I chose Vermeer, and later realized the primaries figured in large in the painting.

I liked the painting so much that I did another one. Red, yellow and blue are all over the place in this one too. (Of course they are all over – I did the entire painting using nothing but the primaries and white.)

See my palette? White, yellow, a mixed orange, 2 reds, 2 blues, a mixed purple and then the other colors that I mixed for whatever I was supposed to be painting when I was procrastinating by photographing the palette.

Every spring I look for blue flowers to put in my blue pots, completed by reds and yellows. No pinks, no purples, an occasional white, but mostly the primaries.

Last summer we were walking through a village on an island in Alaska and I saw these cans.

Only a color junkie would get excited about a scene like this.