Thursday, July 17, 2008

Are we bent a certain way?

Are we bent a certain way? Is a person who is messy capable of changing that? Can a neat freak leave a towel on the floor and walk away? Are we capable of liking or even tolerating foods we hate.
What about color? Can someone who loves orange and hates purple ever get rid of their distaste for purple? Really. Have you ever thought about that? Why do we have color biases? We make judgements about colors all the time. This color is boring. That color is tacky. This color is sweet. That color is rich.
Can a person learn to appreciate a color when they find it utterly offensive? Are we born with color tendencies and preferences? Or, are the colors that attract us somehow the result of fashion and media, or our environments?
I will admit, there are colors I don't like. More importantly, there are colors I don't like to work with for my jewelry. Some colors, when mixed, to me just seem hideous. Why is that? I can't decide if I believe that we are born having certain insticts regarding color. Actually, in a way that's not true. I believe artists are born and not made, and that we relate to color in ways that non artists can't. However, I think there is more to it than just genetics.
I am looking at the colors I don't care for with an open mind. I am trying to see their "potential". Sometimes it is a combination of colors that make the ugly color tolerable, or even beautiful. These are the things I am pondering as I work on my current project. Please comment on what you think about color.

3 comments:

damtalldave said...

I'm not sure that I have a favorite color anymore. As a kid I liked orange. I wanted my mom to make an orange birthday cake, kind of like tang or artificially flavored orange popscicles. When she made orange cake, I didn't like it.

I got to thinking about photography and would people have appreciated Ansel Adams work if it had been in color instead of his striking black and white landscapes?

But I'm glad cellocarrot is experimenting with the colors of the rainbow.

Jen in KS said...

Well, as I've mentioned elsewhere on your blog, my favorite colors live among the deepest dark blues, from cobalt to midnight, because they evoke an emotion that comforts me. A calm seclusion, and I'm an secluded person by nature.

Likewise, the colors I tend to avoid are those that stir emotions I'm not so fond of, that are not in keeping with my personality. I'm not outgoing, and orange tends to be extroverted to me, so I avoid it.

Fortunately, I don't see any color as hateful. Other than, perhaps, pitch black. A lonely color, to me. An absence of color.

BassManPDX said...

I've been thinking about color lately, and I think I agree with Jen's sentiment about black. I'm purging black from my website and blog as of today!