Color Study: Magenta by J. Genevieve

Public Story

Color Study: Magenta

Copyright J. Genevieve 2024

Date of Work Mar 2019 - Sep 2023

Updated Sep 2023

Location varies based on the image

Topics Abstract, Art, Arts, Beauty, Color, Emotion, Environment, Essays, Feature, Feminism, Fine Art, Magenta, Motherhood, Personal, Personal Projects, Perspectives, Photography, Photojournalism, Spirituality, Visual

Summary

Artist and intuitive photographer J.Genevieve explores their portfolio through a series of narratives based on color. This series features the emotion, texture and language of magenta.

Magenta infuriates and intrigues me. I don't have the patience to work with it long enough to learn to photograph it without blowing it out and yet ... I can't get enough of it. It is undaunted and petal-like soft all at once. My preferred shade of it skews red, but sometimes it surprises me. Often I'll find it after the fact, where I wasn't looking for it (and due to the afore mentioned poor technical habit...). Every time I write or speak a daring piece, inevitably, even if the language in the piece alludes to other colors, I can't help but pair it with a magenta visual. Perhaps it's magenta's playfully deliberate way it wraps protection around intuition, encouraging (read: insisting) that those instinctual nudges be trusted. To be an artist is to be infinitely vulnerable in a harsh world. Often it's tough to trust your own sense when it's open for interpretation from the masses. Maybe, just maybe, that dynamic is just the niche magenta was created for.

Here's the writing it was paired with today. To hear a spoken version, check the two part IG reels HERE and HERE.

***

FLAMMABLE

J.Genevieve

The assignment was simple and clear:
Go into three different moments
   Memories
   Find the children
   Show them what's true
     Get out.

What wasn't foreseen was the confrontation.

The children were tucked safely away behind her, wrapped in deep, midnight blue protection. Still she froze and choked unsure of this meaning, unsure of the next move and then suddenly, there was fire.

Everywhere.

She couldn't find the source.
She couldn't stop it.
Everywhere she turned
Everywhere she looked it seemed to grow hotter.

And then she realized, it was coming from her eyes.
The energy of justice.
A hazel fire
Running right down the razor sharp edge of her gaze.

She heard screaming and instinctively turned behind her. The children stared on in shock but were unharmed. The blaze was unable to reach them. Its ferocity had another purpose. She turned back to the hysterics, found the house decimated and them writhing in the histrionics of supposed pain.

"Look at what you did!
You have destroyed everything!
YOU HAVE DESTROYED ME."

Instantly she recoiled, but then her curiosity got the better of her and ... she looked again.

They were fine.
There was not a scratch.
Not even a singe.

And then.
Then the words came.

“I.
Did.
Not.
Destroy.
You.

I saw you.

Yes, my eyes are sharp. Yes, fire follows my gaze. But fire cannot destroy what is real. It can't. It can only purify it. Alter it's form, yes, but it cannot destroy what is real.”

Illusions however.
Illusions are flammable.

635

J. Genevieve

Also by J. Genevieve —

Color Study: Yellow

Color Study: Red

Color Study: Deep Blue

PORTFOLIO