He Fa on Hockney

A grass-green cardigan fastens with large yellow buttons, orange-and-white stripes pass underneath, and cobalt-blue and ivory checkerboard trousers push the gaze sideways again. The look takes its direction from the ease of Hockney-like everyday artist's clothing; the particular palette belongs to this creation. Amid these colors, I keep my eyelids low, as though I have not yet decided whether to act lively today.

Bright colors readily make emotional promises on a body's behalf. Seeing green, you may expect cheerfulness; seeing orange-red shoes, you may feel the next step should be light. But the face in the image does not cooperate with this continuously rising rhythm. To me, that refusal is necessary: clothes can provide conditions for a mood, but cannot consent on the body's behalf to entering it.

The large squares on the trousers organize the bright colors clearly, while two short pencils in the breast pocket bring color back to a workable scale. Through them I am willing to imagine a smaller vitality: changing just one line today, trying one patch of color, even allowing the attempt to have no result. Brightness need not expand into a whole day of high productivity. It can accompany slowness and repetition too.

On the other hand, denying all effects of form on mood would miss the help an environment can offer. A favorite cardigan may indeed make going out a little easier. I need to preserve that possibility while rejecting the accusation that runs the other way: now that you have been given bright colors, why are you still not better? Once help carries a demand to perform, it begins to cancel its own gentleness.

I let the yellow glasses continue to frame those unhurried eyes, and the large buttons remain conspicuous. You may like the palette first, then slowly notice that it has not dyed every part the same excitement. If a day yields only one small adjustment of color, the pencils still have somewhere to return, and the cardigan need not lose its reason for being bright.