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footage, like Kandinsky’s pure lyrically colored abstract Improvisations of the early 1900s, Josef Albers’s intensive color studies, close-ups of impressionist paintings (so she could point out how those painters had optically created color by placing, say, a red beside a yellow to create the sensation of orange in the eye of the beholder), as well as interviews with scientists and color theorists.

    Boyd Werther was not only a top-notch colorist, but articulate and entertaining, and Kate was confident she would have a terrific show.

    While the TV crew finished setting up, Boyd Werther’s ever-present studio assistants—two extraordinarily pretty young women—were floating around the studio picking up brushes and paint rags, answering Boyd’s phone, making coffee. Kate assumed they attended to the genius’s whims and demands, artful or otherwise.

    Boyd Werther strode into the room on bare feet, his studio floors kept clean enough to eat off by those nubile and nimble assistants.

    A large man edging toward fat, Werther was decked out in a silky black shirt, half unbuttoned to display his bulky torso, and loose-fitting drawstring pants, cinched below an impressive belly. His hair was long, stylishly unkempt, once black, now streaked with gray. He took Kate’s hand, planted a dramatic kiss, then kissed both her cheeks. “Your eyes”—he pulled back and studied her—“are remarkably viridian. Has anyone ever told you that?”

    “ Constantly. The butcher, the man at the deli counter, everyone. It’s so annoying.”

    Boyd laughed. “But it’s true. They are a pure viridian green. Quite startling.”

    “Yeah, right,” said Kate. “And my hair is the most brilliant burnt sienna, and my lips are what—cadmium-red scarlet? And what else? I must be missing something.”

    He drew his finger gently along her cheek. “Your skin. A perfect mix of rose madder with an undercoat of Naples yellow mixed with just a dollop of titanium white.”

    “Oh, brother.” Kate rolled her viridian eyes.

    Boyd offered up a sexy, confident smile, tugged gently on a thick chain he wore around his neck.

    “Interesting shackle you’ve got there,” said Kate.

    “This?” He ran his paint-stained fingers under it for better display. “A gift from my first wife. She was Italian, you know. An aristocrat. The piece had been in her family for centuries. Medieval, I believe.”

    Kate came in for a closer look, admired the handicraft of the interlocking crosslike links. “How come she let you keep it?”

    “I remain friends with all my ex-wives—and lovers.”

    “Can we get started?” said the two cameramen practically in unison. They were obviously immune to the painter’s charms.

    Kate gave herself a quick once over in one of Boyd’s floor-length mirrors, smoothed her slacks and sweater, and arranged herself in one of the two director’s chairs that had been set up in the middle of Boyd’s studio, with his enormous colorful canvases surrounding them.

    The assistant clipped microphones onto Boyd and Kate, and for the next two hours the artist hardly took a breath, gesturing at his paintings, delivering opinions, and making pronouncements.

    To her final question—“How important is color to you?”—Boyd said, “It’s everything . Absolutely everything. The reason I wake up in the morning. One only has to look at my paintings to see that. Really, why bother to paint if you’re not going to make use of color, art’s most seductive tool? I eat, sleep, and dream color.”

    “Sounds unhealthy,” said Kate, then quick-turned to the cameramen and said, “Cut.” She shook her head. “Sorry, Boyd. I couldn’t resist. But let me respond to that more respectfully.” She nodded at the cameramen to roll again. “I see,” she said, more solemnly now. “So what would you say to painters who limit their palette, or use no color at all, simply black and white?”

    “Well, Franz Kline got away with black-and-white