Color

Image by Guy Stevens on Unsplash

“Color is a power which directly influences the soul.” - Wassily Kandinsky

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Colors can be joyful, sedate, or neutral, and yet, they have untold power to affect our lives every single day. Here’s what I know: Even though I have my favorite(s), I love all colors!

Light can bring vibrancy to any color, and shadow subdues all of them-notice the flowers on a rainy day and you’ll see what I mean. The same color dramatically changes depending on the light in which we view it. With only one window’s worth of light, the wall color in my snug appears yellowish, but in the light-soaked yoga studio it is ecru. I love the color change on my living room paneling because it gives depth and character to the walls. Everyone wants lots of ‘natural light,’ like a bowl of lemons on a kitchen island beneath a skylight on a sunny day, but I prefer the depth of shadow mixed in.

In her book Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, Ingrid Fetell Lee says, “Whether it’s a row of houses painted in bold swaths of candy hues or a display of colored markers in a stationary shop, vibrant color invariably sparks a feeling of delight.” On the flip side, I remember Tasha Tudor, (an author and illustrator of many books), saying how much she loved how the shadows in her home softened the colors thus providing a calming atmosphere for her life and art. I agree!

The names of colors delight me. A couple of years ago while driving to Peterborough to attend the Monadnock Art Tour, during leaf peeping season, my husband and I made a mental list of all the colors of the leaves along the route. You wouldn’t believe how many we came up with. Let me see if I can remember them. Magenta, lime green, straw, pink, lemon yellow, Kelly green, oatmeal, brick, pea green, pumpkin, brilliant orange, maroon, raspberry, silver-white, burnt orange, terra cotta, pale yellow, burlap, grey-green, purplish-blue, candy apple red, gold, rose, ecru, loden green, yellow-green, burnt umber….I could go on indefinitely. I was surprised because I guess I thought foliage was confined to red, orange, and yellow….silly me. What a delightful pastime it was to catalog all these colors, and, what a difference the experience made in my life as an artist. Now I notice gradations of color every day. The color in my rugs, my gardens, the books on my shelves, the bricks that surround my fireplace. The depths, the turns, the reflected light, it all adds to the sanctuary that I call my home.

I love the muted shades of winter, bathed in the thin sunlight of the season. Blue is my favorite color, any shade at all. Orange is my least favorite. I think I don’t own one orange thing….although I like the orange of squash soup on my dinner table! I know many people choose their clothing by their ‘season,’ and I admit that certain colors make me look like I already died, but there’s a part of me that says, “To hell with that, I’ll wear it anyway,” if I really love that piece. I used to paint my interiors on the safe side, you know, beige and cream. But a friend encouraged me to be daring, even giving me a book on it so I could approach the concept gradually. And, I painted my hallway red, and a bedroom eggplant. Passing through those rooms gives me smiling pleasure.

Silvery streaks of moonlight outlines the sundial at the center of my herb bed. Morning mist casts a cool glow over the wooden bench in the circle garden. When the forget-me-knots bloom everywhere in my spring garden, I simply sit on the back step and gaze with awe at nature’s paint job. ‘How perfect is this!” I think to myself, and then I write about color for all of you.

How about you? What is your favorite color, and which shade of that color? What about your least favorite color? Do you ever choose it, just to test out your preferences, or do you steer clear always? Color is the lifeblood of our existence. Of this I am absolutely sure.