I have had a complete and abiding passion for color all my life. This love is renewed daily, inspired by its great power and ability to communicate. It is the action of color that brings you into an involvement with your environment, whether interior or exterior, in an instant.
Telling you loudly or softly, moment to moment, where you are, who you are, and even what you are, in the scheme of things. It can reach into the core of your being with influential messages, great and small, like nothing else ever can.
There is no doubt that color deeply affects and creates feelings, expressive beyond the abilities of mere language or music. It has been the power behind the throne of the great artists’ brush strokes.
A fellow artist and I were discussing art once, and he shared with me something very interesting. He said one of the biggest features of individual artists living in the art world, is whether or not they are specialists in the use of color. The existence of artists can be clearly divided into two types: Those who are colorists, and those who specialize in perhaps other areas and ways of expressing themselves.
The Impressionist Movement opened up the world of art by making strong colorists. Perhaps this came about because they were exposed to the more modern, practically infinite availability of different colored pigments to work with. Renaissance painters and before had only a preconceived palette due to the limited availability of source materials for their pigments.
This gave rise to their rather bland, but soothing and standard oil colors paintings, with black, brown, vermillion, ochre, royal blue and purples predominating, along with greyed-down versions from mixing them on the palette. Only rarely were they able to use outright green, yellow, and a variety of red pigments.
This opening up of the world of art to the world of colors, seems to have come down the line to include colors for modern personal clothing and women’s makeup. Certainly, our palettes for these things have changed since the Renaissance, and before that the Middle Ages.
Our emotional states may have loosened up, as well. I believe people in the current time are much more able to be spontaneous and express their natural feelings and states of mind.
When you’re mad, you see red. When you are in a bad state of mind, your mood is black. If you become jealous of someone, you are green with envy. Purple passions in love or work lead your way, determining what you do and will become. Said to be green, is someone who is interested in environmental responsibility.
And seasons are similarly influential, largely as a result of the colors they bring with them.
In youth, you are immersed in the Springtime of your life. That comes with the lightness and brightness of Spring colors, through the return of nurturing warmth to the air and rainfall. The resilience of life is affirmed once again, as the birds, bees and multi-hued flowers come to life out of hibernation, to amaze us.
The Summer of Life is when yours is at its peak. Growth, activity and mobility are unrestrained. This is when robust, mature flora and fauna are showing us abundance and vitality in their colors.
And reaching old age, you experience the richness and stability of the Autumn and Winter of your life–oh, those Golden Years!
However, when you are in the money, you have a lot of silver. Is that because you are someone’s Golden Boy (or Girl), or just because you have decided to put yourself in the pink?
These proverbial expressions are actually never taught. We have an intimacy with their meanings from their closeness to our hearts, held by the intuition of the soul.
Color is something so subtly powerful and pervading that it is an all-too-often overlooked subject, by being extremely panoramic. Knowledge, understanding, control, and deep appreciation for color tends to be relegated to experts, artists and designers, who then have a corner on the market. Most people have been left out of the loop, becoming bystanders to the action.
Wendy J. Smith, the author and illustrator of “All Your Winning Colors“, believes this is innately unfair. Anyone who is alive deserves to know everything they want to about colors. An opportunity has been created here to open the door to having power and control over this part of your life.
That would mean knowing what looks best on you, and knowing what colors and color design can do for your well-being. Since this subject has not been studied extensively before this time, it may have an element of culture shock.
I believe that is part of what makes it valuable and interesting. This is a new chance. It is one without dangers or drawbacks, so get involved with color with us, who are happily using Winning Colors techniques.