IMG_3444, originally uploaded by leyaevelyn.
When I was painting the walls of my house recently, I put together chips of the various colors I wanted to use: various grays, light and dark, dark blue, split pea green, robin’s egg blue. My friend, Sylvie, said “If this were a painting, what color do you think it need?” Red, of course. But I had had so much red in my house, I was trying to avoid it. I kept saying no, no red. But eventually, the red had its say. Now the wall going down into my studio is a deep tomato red. It looks great. Necessary.
One of the first things I learned in my color class in art school was the unreliability of color memory. If you ask a dozen people to point to fire engine red, you probably will get a dozen reds. And it is so relative. Depends on what is around it, how much, where, how far, how close. Like all of us.