The Language of Color: Private and Public Eudemonia

In a new Future of the Humanities Project event series — A Bent but Beautiful World: Literature, Art, and the Environment — we delve into the topical area of our environment. In recent years, we have rightly heard much about the world’s environmental problems, dangers, and disasters. However, in this series, we will invite speakers to explore the ways in which art and literature have foregrounded the inspirational beauty, delicacy, and strength of the natural world.

Estelle Thompson is a British abstract painter who lives and works in London and Barbados. In this talk, she will look at her use of light and color in painting and built environment public commissions. As an artist, curator, educator, and designer, Thompson has always considered color as fundamental to all aspects of our lives. She celebrates its environmental function and positive power for humanity. She passionately explores color, form, space, and geography to extend the history of abstraction, optics, and contemporary aesthetics. She will also consider the overlap of studio practice research, so key to her large-scale public commissions, such as Milton Keynes Theatre, Quaglino’s restaurant in London, and various hospital and university buildings across the United Kingdom. Thompson will touch on artistic freedom and social responsibility, the nuts and bolts of commissioning, and the ethics of working as an artist both in the private or public sphere. She will also share how she spent two years living and working in Barbados during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the island’s location and environment further influenced her practice and philosophy.

Online. Open to all.

 

Participants:

Estelle Thompson is a British abstract painter who lives and works in London and Barbados. She has exhibited internationally, curated exhibitions in Europe and the Caribbean, and received commissions to incorporate color in the built environment of buildings across the United Kingdom. She is currently professor at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Thompson’s studio practice centers on color, light, form, pictorial space, and geometry. Her works are held in major public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Council, and the British Museum.

Kathryn Temple (moderator) is a professor in the Department of English at Georgetown University where she has taught since 1994. She specializes in the study of law and the humanities. Among her publications are Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in William Blackstone’s England (2019) and the co-edited Research Handbook on Law and Emotions (2021). Her humanities outreach activities include work with military veterans and the incarcerated.

Michael Scott is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college adviser for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior adviser to the president at Georgetown University. Scott was on the editorial board which relaunched Critical Survey from Oxford University Press. Scott previously served as the pro vice chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University.

 

This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project; the Georgetown Humanities Initiative; the Georgetown Master’s Program in the Engaged and Public Humanities; Campion Hall, Oxford; and the Las Casas Institute (Blackfriars Hall, Oxford). It is part of the one-year-long series: A Bent but Beautiful World: Literature, Art, and the Environment.