Colours

I love colours. The more colourful something is the better. However, a splash of vibrant colour on a black, white, or black and white / grey background pleases me just as much. I even try to imagine what the colours would have been when I look at an old black and white or sepia photograph. I don’t think I’ll ever know if I’m right, but I don’t think I’m that far wrong either.

I like the differences in colour that the seasons bring, and I like the differences in colour the changing light of the day also brings. I even like the way how the colours appear in the darkness of night.

I like the crisp white of freshly fallen snow; the deep blue of a clear summer day’s sky; the startling orange of a sunset; the assortment of greens when looking at a rainforest; all the different vibrant colours of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers; the reds, yellows and oranges of a roaring fire; the purples and blues of the deep oceans.

Moving away from the natural world, and into the man-made world, I like the combination of colours used in art, advertising, TV, fashion, vehicles, road signs – they all serve a purpose in some way, and I could not imagine anything without colour.

And colour is one of the reasons I am grateful to have my sense of sight. There is so much information around us wherever we look; a large percentage of it is ignored. It must be really hard to take in every single piece of information that we see, yet we somehow do. An example is if you see something late in the day and you remember seeing it earlier. You can’t remember exactly where you saw it, but you know you did.

If what you saw was of an unusually vivid colour, you would instantly remember where you saw it. If it was a turquoise telephone box, you would instantly remember where you saw the last one. If it was a red and blue spotted mini you would remember exactly where you saw it last. The reason for remembering is because of the vivid colour.

If it was a blue shirt you wouldn’t remember if you saw it at all before, even if thirty people were wearing the same shirt at the same time you last saw it. The more everyday things we see, we tend to ignore them because we are used to seeing them.

We are used to seeing the greenery in summer and the lack of green leaves in winter, but ignore the colours that are actually there. The green leaves are not the same colour green; the blue sky is not the same shade of blue. Taking notice of the difference in colours, the vibrancy that is all around us, really opens us up to appreciate what we actually have. It is a fantastic world that we live on, and what is equally fantastic is that we have the ability to interpret and interact with everything that is around us.

Rather than just look at a colour, I try to really bring out the colour itself. I try to make it ‘alive’ if that makes sense. What I mean is, I concentrate on the colour, and notice it become more vivid, bolder. It exercises my eyes when I do this, but it also gives me more of a connection to what is around me. Rather than just look at what is around me, I ‘feel’ the colours of everything that is around me through my eyes. I must admit to feeling very special when the colours start to glow before my very eyes. It is literally a magicalexperience, and one I try to experience at least once a day.

So, I love colours. And I don’t have a favourite.