It's Hard to Work in Yellow

Beauford's masterful use of the color "yellow" is inevitably mentioned when people talk about his art.

It wasn't until I watched artists in the YouTube video Art Matters NY (55:18-57:04 minutes) discussing his recent solo exhibition at The Drawing Center that I began to understand the level of his mastery.

Shown at In the Medium of Life at The Drawing Center:

Untitled (Red Bar)
(1962) Gouache on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, N. Y.

Comments in the video such as "if you try to ... make something look 3D with yellow ... give it some volume with yellow paint, you almost immediately figure out that yellow wants to sit there and be flat" incited me to research painting with yellow.

So, I did an Perplexity AI search using the following prompt:

"I recently watched a YouTube video during which an artist expressed her admiration for Beauford Delaney's masterful use of the color yellow in his paintings and described the difficulty she has painting with yellow.

"Is this difficulty something that is "known" among painters?

"Might it be peculiar to her?"

Here was the response:

Yes, difficulty painting with the color yellow is a recognized challenge among painters and is not peculiar to the artist you watched; yellow is widely considered one of the trickiest colors to handle in both technical and expressive terms.

Yellow pigments tend to be less opaque compared to other colors, making it hard to achieve bright, smooth coverage without multiple layers. Many yellow paints are described as overly transparent or even "clumpy," leading artists to struggle with getting an even, vivid finish. Classic solutions include starting with a white or light primer to boost vibrancy or layering over ochre or brown bases to build depth.

The issues with yellow extend beyond opacity: yellow is highly sensitive to contamination by other colors during wet-on-wet techniques, easily muddying toward green, brown, or dull tones with accidental mixing. Many botanical artists and portrait painters report avoiding yellow subjects purely because of how hard the pigment is to control, highlighting this as a shared experience across painting communities.

Artists like Beauford Delaney and Van Gogh became famous for overcoming these obstacles and using yellow to powerful effect, mastering layering and pigment selection to create luminous, spiritual, and expressive works. Delaney’s yellow, for example, is described as interwoven with other colors to create a lyrical, layered brushwork that captures both light and emotion.

Having read the above, I am looking at Beauford's yellows in a new light. 

Here are just a few examples of his work in which this color predominates. (Note the texture in these paintings!)

Portrait of James Baldwin
(1966) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, N. Y.

Street Scene
(1968) Oil on canvas
Signed and dated "BEAUFORD DELANEY 1968" lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, N. Y.

Bernard Hassell
(ca. 1971) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, N. Y. 

Untitled
Signed, inscribed and dated "Beauford Delaney Paris 1965 midday" on the reverse
(1965) Oil on canvas
25 1/2 x 21 in. (64.8 x 53.3 cm.)
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, N. Y.

Untitled (Portrait of a Young Man)
(c. 1963) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, N. Y.