Colour

2003: Australian Paintings

This Maximum Card certainly fits the description of this week's Sunday Stamps theme of colourful. The postcard shows a house in the Melbourne suburbs and the stamp painting is by the artist who spent his career being fascinated by the suburbs, painting houses and domestic interiors, Howard Arkley (1951-1999).  People rarely appear and there is sometimes both beauty and menace in their portrayal. The painting shown is "Family Home: Suburban Exterior" of 1993 painted in an acrylic flat pattern. Arkley himself grew up in the Surrey Hills suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, and famously was taken to the National Gallery in 1967 where he was blown away by the paintings of the Australian bush by Sidney Noland. On returning home he copied the works from the catalogue using his father's household paints and the rest as they say is history.

1999: The Millennium Series. The Artist's Tale

Another artist who loves colour is Howard Hodgkin (b1932) painter and printmaker.  He paints very slowly and can take up to four years on a work the original imagery obscured, the spectator has to solve the riddle. This painting is called "New Worlds" it epitomises his abstract work showing new ways to see the natural world.

1978: Salyut 6 Space Station

Which was also one of the aims of the Salyut 6 which had infra-red, ultraviolet and sub-millimetre spectra capabilities. Launched in 1977 and operated until 1982 during its time in orbit it was visited by 5 long term and 11 short duration crews from various nations. It studied astronomy, earth resources observations and the effects of space flight on the human body.  The 20 portholes were for observation and specific crops were planted at test sites on earth to test the cameras. The second of the se-tenant stamps shows the first crew of Romanenko and Grechko who spent 96 days on board but not without incident because they had to do a space walk to inspect damage at the station which was precluding Suyuz 25 from docking.  Romanenko forgot to attach his safety cord and when he pushed off from the side Grechko had to grab hold of it as he floated away.   In his cosmonaut career Romanenko has spent an amazing total of nearly 431 days in space.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps theme of Colourful stamps