What is a colourist? The artist who thinks in colour

Hi, I'm Théo! When people discovered my mother’s canvases, they often said the same thing: “what a colourist”. For a long time I took it as a simple compliment. In fact, it is a precise word, with a real history in painting. Here is what it means, and why it suited her so well.

What is a colourist?

A colourist is an artist for whom colour is not a tool serving the drawing, but the very subject of the work. Where some painters first build a shape, a line, a perspective, then “fill it in” with colour, the colourist starts from colour. It is colour that carries the emotion, the rhythm, the light. Drawing takes a back seat, and sometimes it disappears entirely.

The distinction is an old one. As early as the 17th century, art history set the champions of drawing, line and rigour against the champions of colour, sensation and life. Delacroix versus Ingres, later the Impressionists, then Bonnard, Matisse, Rothko or Zao Wou-Ki: in every generation, colourists reminded us that a single colour could be enough to move us.

Colour as a language

What truly defines a colourist is not the number of colours, but the relationship they hold with them. They know that a red does not have the same value next to a blue as it does next to an orange. They play with chords, contrasts, vibrations. A colour turns warm or cold, advances or recedes, soothes or awakens, depending on its neighbours.

This is exactly what we explore in our articles on the psychology of colours and on the power of colours: every shade acts on our emotions. The colourist turns that into a full language of its own.

Colourist : the meaning, and the other trades that share the name

In painting, a colourist is an artist whose subject is colour itself, not decoration. The definition fits in one sentence, and it explains the rest : for them colour builds the work, where others build the shape first.

The word travels through other trades, which sometimes muddles a search. A hair colourist works on hair colouring ; a comics colourist adds colour to another artist's line work. The meaning I am talking about here is the oldest of the three : the one from the history of painting, where it describes a way of painting before it describes a job.

Recognising a colourist takes very little. Notice whether you remember a colour first or a shape first as you walk away from the canvas. If it is the colour, you were standing in front of a colourist. That is what makes these works feel so alive on a wall, whether it is a deep blue or a red that warms the room, as our article on the healing power of colours describes.

Régine Gardan, a colourist

My mother, Régine Gardan, was a colourist in the fullest sense. She even organised her work into colour periods: a season of reds, one of blues, one of greens. Colour did not illustrate her paintings, it was their very heart. She worked it in oil, with a palette knife, to keep that living matter that catches the light.

Like many colourists, she admired Zao Wou-Ki, but also Rothko and Monet: painters for whom colour becomes a space you step into, rather than an image you look at.

Living with a colourist’s work

The strength of a colourist’s canvas is that it transforms a room without telling a story. No scene, no narrative: just a chromatic presence that changes the atmosphere. A deep blue brings calm, a solar yellow warms a dark room, a red gives character to a neutral wall.

That is also why a colourful abstract work suits almost any interior: it does not lock in a style, it brings an emotion. You choose it not for what it depicts, but for what it makes you feel.

Frequently asked questions

What does a colourist do?

They build the work out of the relationships between colours : choosing chords, tuning contrasts, adjusting one shade according to its neighbours. Drawing comes afterwards, when it comes at all.

What is the difference between a colourist and an abstract painter?

The two often overlap without being the same. Abstraction says what the work does not depict ; the word colourist says where the artist starts. You can be a colourist painting portraits, and abstract without being a colourist.

Who are the great colourists in art history?

Delacroix against Ingres in the 19th century, then the Impressionists, Bonnard, Matisse, Rothko and Zao Wou-Ki, whom my mother admired above all.

A vitamin of colour for your walls

That is the whole point of Vitamin of Colors: to share the eye of a colourist, those colours she assembled by hand, one by one. Each canvas is a one-of-a-kind piece, signed and delivered with its certificate of authenticity.

Browse the collection and let a colour choose you.