{"id":3161,"date":"2015-05-05T21:08:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T04:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/?p=3161"},"modified":"2016-02-16T13:10:32","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T21:10:32","slug":"may-5-2015-color-is-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/life-stories\/may-5-2015-color-is-life\/","title":{"rendered":"May 5, 2015 – Color is life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>
\"veldas<\/a>

Velda’s palette after painting a recent Friday group. It was a painting in itself!<\/p><\/div>\n

Listen to this post:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/20150505-Post.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n

It\u2019s no secret to any of you that I am pretty much obsessed by color.\u00a0 Looking back it started pretty early.\u00a0 Like probably most of us, growing up I had coloring books and Crayola crayons.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure we had them at home, but my clearest memory of \u201ccoloring,\u201d as we called it, was at Grandma and Grandpa\u2019s house.\u00a0 My dad was an only child and was old<\/em> at 28 when he married Mom. So when, in less than four years, the four of us came along, Grandma must have felt like she hit the grandchild jackpot!\u00a0 She adored us.\u00a0 And she devoted one of the six drawers of her dresser to us.\u00a0 This was where all the coloring books and crayons were.\u00a0 Often there were four full-sized Hershey bars waiting in there too!<\/p>\n

I remember being a bit disappointed that no matter how hard I tried; crayons wouldn\u2019t make a solid patch of color.\u00a0 From the start, I\u2019ve wanted color to be saturated!\u00a0 When I was in elementary school, I used to love to make rainbows with both crayons and felt pens.\u00a0 Starting with red triangles in all four corners of the paper, next came orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and back to red.\u00a0 Then repeat until the lines, or arcs met to make a rectangle and fill the rectangle to the middle.\u00a0 Much later, I learned that this is called a God\u2019s Eye.\u00a0 I loved how one color leads to the next and then back to the start in one continuous blend.\u00a0 Such a perfect system!<\/p>\n

I\u2019d guess that most of us are drawn to seeing color in the spectrum in this way.\u00a0 But, I just love being in art supply stores and seeing the color in all the paints, pencils, pastels.\u00a0 And they are almost always arranged in the spectrum \u2013 it just makes sense to do this!\u00a0 Here are some photos from the first time I went to the Sennelier art store in Paris.\u00a0 An art supply store<\/em> in Paris<\/em>, for me it hardly gets any better!\u00a0 My clothes in the closet are arranged in the spectrum. Color is the filter I see the world through.<\/p>\n

\"sennelier\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I\u2019d been leading watercolor groups for about a year and a half, I received an email from a lovely woman in Montana who asked that I let her know when I have a weekend workshop, she\u2019d like to come to California to take it.\u00a0 Weekend workshop? What weekend workshop?\u00a0 I asked my regular painters, if I were to teach something beyond what they get from me every week, they said: Color. You know a lot about color.<\/p>\n

So I figured out how to present what I thought would be useful to convey about using color, pigments and paints – and a color workshop was born.\u00a0 While I was putting this workshop together, I went to see my spiritual director, Sister Mary \u2013 a treasured source of love, affirmation and wisdom in my life. I showed her the cover of an art supply catalog that had the spectrum \u2013 the rainbow \u2013 in art supplies and I asked her, why do we love the spectrum, why do we love color presented in this way?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0She said that the rainbow is light, which is God made visible.\u00a0 And the complete spectrum has a wholeness to it. Oh, so, it\u2019s whole and it\u2019s holy!<\/p>\n

\"spectrum\"<\/a>

Just after writing, I saw this spectrum at the kichen sink!<\/p><\/div>\n

Since becoming a teacher of color, my natural curious nature has me learning all I can about it. Color is all about light, which is energy.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure most people know that the color we see is the part of the spectrum of light that the object does not<\/em> absorb \u2013 it\u2019s the portion of the spectrum that is reflected back to our eyes.\u00a0 What blows my mind, is the capacity of the photoreceptors in our eyes to receive the different frequencies of light and how that registers in our brains to allow us to discern very subtle differences in color.\u00a0 And that this is a capacity we can grow.\u00a0 We can learn to see color with finer granularity.<\/p>\n

Color is subjective too.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing to me what Joe will call \u201cpink.\u201d\u00a0 For me pink is pink<\/em>.\u00a0 For him it can be a color I see as a beige with a slight red in it, or even what I\u2019d call violet. He\u2019s not a \u201cpink\u201d guy, so anything tending in that direction is labeled such.\u00a0 And color is personal. I\u2019ve come to see that each artist has a palette.\u00a0 Paulette does not like green-green, so she uses a lot of turquoise-green and yellow-green in her paintings and they are beautiful.\u00a0 Gillian likes muted, sophisticated, hard to name colors. \u00a0Heather\u2019s paintings are the opposite. She uses clear, pure color in a refined and delicate harmony.\u00a0 Mine is a full-spectrum palette, especially as time goes on. I\u2019m happiest when I can bring all six major colors of the color wheel – red (or pink), orange, yellow, green, blue, violet – in some form, into my paintings.\u00a0 Some colors may dominate, of course, but having them all there gives me a sense of \u201call is well, nothing is missing.\u201d\u00a0 That said, red is not so much my color, for me pink is it<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Color is light \u2013 to see it there must be light \u2013 but not too much.\u00a0 There\u2019s no color in the dark, but, in blinding light, there is no color either.\u00a0 The \u201ccolored\u201d object is so awash in light that all of it is reflected back to us, which we see as white.\u00a0 \u00a0Since light is energy, color is energy.\u00a0 The more color the more energy.\u00a0 Right now, most of my paintings (which are<\/em> life in full color) are at my mom\u2019s office as we are in between the weekends of Marin Open Studios. The walls are bare and the house feels<\/em> different. It\u2019s spare and empty, not just visually, but at deeper level too.\u00a0\u00a0 Conversely, if you walk into the real estate office, you can feel the energy in the space from all the color that surrounds you. \u00a0I hear this all the time – it\u2019s not just me!<\/p>\n

I know bold color is not for everyone. Not only do we each have our personal colors, the world has its color trends. The interior design palette for some years now has been quite muted; neutrals, greys and black and white have been the style.\u00a0 I read somewhere that colors become subdued when the economy is in a downturn.\u00a0 \u00a0I was recently given a subscription to House Beautiful magazine. I\u2019ve not read these magazines in years. But I\u2019m really encouraged to see the recent issues filled with vibrant color. Hallelujah.<\/p>\n

For me, color is a nutrient. It feeds me. And this makes sense, as it is energy, light, God even.\u00a0 Owning my love of color – and using it to express what is in me, has given me my life\u2019s work.\u00a0 The thrill of putting color onto white paper never gets old.\u00a0 I\u2019m watching the paintings in me become increasingly vibrant as time goes on. \u00a0I see this as a reflection of my clearing the way, of opening more to allow the life-force to come through me. Color and light shows up in my paintings and I show up in the world.\u00a0 We each are a unique and precious expression of our source, of God.\u00a0 Color may or may not be how you are channeled into the world. \u00a0If it is, I invite you to come out and play with me.\u00a0 And regardless, whatever is your way, bring it on!<\/p>\n

Love,<\/p>\n

Cara<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen to this post: It\u2019s no secret to any of you that I am pretty much obsessed by color.\u00a0 Looking back it started pretty early.\u00a0 Like probably most of us, growing up I had coloring books and Crayola crayons.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure we had them at home, but my clearest memory of \u201ccoloring,\u201d as we called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMay 5, 2015 - 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