Color is power which directly influences the soul.
Wassily Kandinsky
With the ongoing global pandemic, I feel at times, that I have embarked on a voyage into the deep and foreboding unknown. I imagine that many of you share similar emotions. What lies ahead for all of us? We don’t know. Certainly, what I do know is that I must take the necessary precautions and I am grateful for the advisories we receive. We are all in this together. We have a social contract with one another to heed the pointers that we are given as best as we can. What we also need to do, is counter our understandable anxieties by finding opportunities to bring joy into our lives. For me, color is both my palliative and emotional nourishment. It might be for many of you, too.
Why do I love color?
Why is it that color, my essential fuel – carbonless, reliable, ever-renewable and naturally abundant – stokes my energy and makes me tick? Colors, with their many luminous and scintillating hues, are invigorating, restorative and exhilarating. Colors are healing. They are also mood-enhancers and much-needed antidotes to melancholy. With their contrasts, dynamism, unity, repose and tranquility, colors can complement and awaken the emotional potential that dwells within us. I choose to dwell in a world of colors. They envelope my surroundings and inform my creative output. Why not invite an abundance of color into your life as well?
Color provides us with intensities of feeling
Dull colors might place you in the doldrums – desolation and lamentation, your constant companions. Bright colors however, might animate you to climb ever-upwards into the spheres of exhilarating joy. You will learn a great deal on your journey upwards because with color comes challenge and discovery – unexpected, sometimes awe-inspiring aesthetic connections and juxtapositions. For me, brilliant color is essential – a prerequisite for my creativity. My living and working environments reflect that appreciation of its power. When I paint, I tend to use luminous colors. When I write, I celebrate (both visually and verbally) glorious color-spheres. I did so in THE WORLD OF GLIMPSE. What I am writing at present, is in fact, my ode-of-sorts – without rhyme or lyrics – to luminous color – to its energizing, compatible, creativogenic (a term coined by Arieti) life force.
So, how about inviting more color into your life?
Color can add to your vitality and to the health of your internal being. A world of beautiful surround-color just like a world of melodious surround-sound, might counterbalance the weight of your problems or the gloom of negativity that sometimes appears unsolicited into your life – into all of our lives. Try to banish negativity where you can and instead follow your own Color Glimpses of Possibilities into the creative and positive potential that resides within you. Bright, luminous colors will boost your spirits – elevate your moodprints.
It is a good idea if possible to live in dwellings (interiors and exteriors) that contain colors conducive to your aesthetic sensibilities and feelings of well-being – positive, hope-filled and creative environments with chromatic contrasts combining seamlessly with the quietude of harmony. And if we can, let’s surround ourselves with nature or if we are unable to do that, at least try to have the outdoors somewhere in viewing distance. I love to stretch-and-farfetch my thoughts and my creative output: In my book THE WORLD OF GLIMPSE, I created a dwelling place of brilliant luminosity for the Glimpsibles and contrasted this with the dismal gloomasphere of the Drooma of Sooma Sooma. In my book of poems I TOUCHED A STAR IN MY DREAM LAST NIGHT, I imagined a land with no color at all:
NO-COLOR LAND
No-Color Land:
Bland. Same. Tame.
No color with a name.
Blue, green, yellow, white?
Nowhere in sight.
Black, brown, pink, red? Not a color in my head. Indigo, blue, purple, peach?
They’re all anaemic bleach!
What a wash-out of a dream!
I welcome morning’s color scheme.
Vivid color for me is a mood-enhancer and most definitely, invigorating.
Dull, drab colors are simply depressing and apathy-evoking. Nobody needs mood-depleters so try to banish any negativity that might creep into your life unsolicited and seek colors to negate their deleterious affect.
Yes, I will continue to imagine, paint and write about fantastical, luminous, joyful worlds of brilliant colors – environments replete with flowing hues! I will surround myself with all manner of color that resonates with me and keep the doors to my imagination wide-open to the infinite, fanciful, luminous, free-flowing glimpses of possibilities. This is my ode-of-sorts to color and this is my message of encouragement to you: invite color into your life!
Ellen Palestrant’s love of vibrant, energetic, harmonious, and unabashedly layered dimensions of colors seen in her paintings are also found in her descriptive language in her fantastic work of literary genius The World of Glimpse. Ellen invites us to imagine the “any colored sky”…where time is understood through colors…and Chapter 1 begins with the words: “it was five to pink”. Color abounds in this world where energetic creative Glimpsibles live, and is contrasted with the lackluster world of the greedy and covetous Drooma of Sooma Sooma. Color for Ellen is a whole philosophical realm , where a person’s mood can affect their perception of colors.In a conversation between a Glimpsible named Perceptilly and another named Spunktaneous,she states: ” The colors you perceive are entirely you, and each time you look, they’re different. Depends on your moodprint which affects the glow you give to color”. (pg 101) So my advice to everyone is to let go, imagine, dream, and enjoy, the glorious world of colors Ellen has created and then shared with all of us.
Loved the post. And agree 100%. My home is filled with color inside and out. It makes life beautiful, peaceful and restful. I find myself thanking God for a place of beauty to reside. I love jewel tones and the rooms of my home and outdoor living space are filled with it. If some unsolicited gloom comes my way all I need to do is to look at a wall and find peace.
Loved the post. And agree 100%. My home is filled with color inside and out. It makes life beautiful, peaceful and restful. I find myself thanking God for a place of beauty to reside. I love jewel tones and the rooms of my home and outdoor living space are filled with it. If some unsolicited gloom comes my way all I need to do is to look at a wall and find peace.
“From the colour of art, to the colour of the Spring flowers, to the colour of sound!”
From your wonderfully vibrant paintings, Ellen P; to the diverse spectrum of flower species blooming across our garden in anticipation of new growth in the Summer; to recent memories of Evensong in Westminster Abbey, with the soaring sound of the choristers filling the soaring Late Gothic architecture!
Jill, Linda and John, how wonderfully you all rejoice in the vibrancy, emotionality and diversity of a world filled with color! Thank you for your comments.