...the context of colour

Colour has been something that has always fascinated me.

As well as the visual interpretation of colour, I’m also interested in how colour influences emotions and mood and whether colour can be contextual?

I wonder whether colour actually exists in our world or whether colour is a phenomenon created by our eyes or perhaps our brain, after all isn’t colour created by the refraction of light? Maybe everything in the world is a different tone of just one hue. What if the world is really beige?

Even having that thought makes me feel extremely sad; a colourless world has an impact on my entire psyche. So if a lack of colour brings with it a sense of hopelessness and bland monotony what does colour bring?

We all know & mostly buy in to today’s colour associations with gender – pink for girls and blue for boys’, whether we feel this is right or wrong. However it seems that the use of pink and blue emerged at the turn of the century, the rule being pink for boys, blue for girls. Since pink was a stronger colour it was best suited for boys; blue was more delicate and dainty and best for girls. Blue is considered a calm, passive colour, hence feminine. Red (pink derived from red) is considered active hence masculine. Why is challenging this norm in our culture so difficult?

And what about the emotions, sensations and cultural inferences of colour?

If I think about Yellow for example what do I feel, what mood does it evoke? Bright, optimistic, vibrant, warm, alive, fresh…but these associations are not what the colour itself mean but what is evoked in me by my associations with objects are that colour. Sunshine is a warm, bright yellow & lemons taste zingy, zesty and fresh. Both culturally contextual, because if you have never experienced a lemon, what would that colour evoke within you? Additionally I wonder whether the nomadic tribes that permanently live in the Sahara have emotions of sunshine yellow in the same way we do in the northern hemisphere. For them, the sun mostly brings harsh relentless, unforgiving conditions to live in. So does it make them have the same sense of optimism and cheerfulness when experiencing that colour?

Similarly green for me feels like the colour of the outdoors and of nature. Fresh, natural and alive. So for those who live within the Sahara desert the colour and emotion associated with the outdoors would be terracotta, wouldn’t it?

Interestingly only 3 primary colours are needed to make the entire spectrum of colours – Red, Yellow & Blue. Combinations of these 3 colours give us all we need, just as the 3 in the Holy Trinity – Father, Son & Holy Spirit give us all we need as believers to create a living relationship with God the creator.

Without light we are unable to see and experience colour. In scripture it is God that commanded light to shine out of the darkness – so colour and our experience of it is God given but culturally created.

For me, my favourite colour changes dependant on my mood or what I feel the need to experience.  This blog is in black and white, so either completely right or wrong – otherwise it would be in shades of grey, wouldn’t it?