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SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to The Jewish News

arold Linton makes the
world more colorful.
He uses color liberally
in his three-dimensional
wall reliefs, one recently placed at the
Muskegon County Airport and anoth-
er at Temple Israel.
He writes about the use of color
with seven books published and an
eighth and ninth on the way.
He teaches about color at
Lawrence Technological University
(LTU) in Southfield and has set
up a master's degree program

Artist,
author and teacher
Harold Linton
is an ambassador
of color.

12/19
1997

122

for colorists at an art school in Fin-
land.
"Architectural colorists working as
members of architectural design teams
represent a new and emerging career,"
said Linton, whose Farmington Hills
home showcases examples of his color-
fill, patterned, abstract paintings from
an earlier time in his career.
"I teach the ways color can com-
plement, offer contrast or camouflage
the environment in which it is used,"
he said.
When Linton is absorbed with a
special project — often working out of
his home studio — he creates pages
and pages of color patterns, combining
hand sketching with computer-gener-
ated designs until reaching the shades
he considers just right.
Linton, 50, assistant dean of the
College of Architecture and Design at
LTU, began his own college studies
thinking he would be a painter and
earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts
at Syracuse University in 1969.
The color specialist went on to Yale
University, where he earned a master's
degree in painting from its School of
Art & Architecture in 1972.
"Both schools, Syracuse and Yale,
had a strong emphasis on color," Lin-
ton explained about his initiation
into his area of concentration.
"Yale had a special impact because
of the teaching of [painter] Josef
Albers."
Linton's first job after college
immersed him in color work for a
school and ski house being built in
Colorado, a contrast with other pro-
jects such as a painting he did for a
Westinghouse lobby, which appeared
on the cover of Interiors magazine.
"I used my earnings to
go to Israel to learn
about making
furniture,"
said Linton, who met
his wife, Nadyne, an Oak
Parker, on a kibbutz.
Their marriage
brought him to
Michigan,
where he taught
at Wayne State
University and
Macomb Communi-
ty College before join-
,/ ing the faculty at LTU in
1974.
As Linton intensified his
career base at the Southfield
university, he also intensified his
focus on the role of color in the