Colours
Colours
Colours
-Dhruvika Sachan
"A life without colours is like a body without the soul, just like a fire without
heat, a love without passion, poetry without essence."
The appeal of colour is universal. Colour plays an important role in our lives.
Colour is a source of pleasure to everybody. Colours can change the moods,
reduce or increase tensions, cause excitement and sometimes have a soothing
effect for a tired person.
It is hard to imagine a life without colour. The truth is we don’t all exactly know
the colours that someone else sees. We all probably see colours a little
differently, different shades, different tones, and hues. We know that colour
blindness exists and some people cannot see colours and instead live in a world
of muted colours. Almost more terrifying to me than colour blindness would be
living in a world of hyper-colour. Where every colour appeared neon and
fluorescent. Could you imagine, only being able to escape bright, burning
colours by closing your eyes?
Colour communicates so much. It has the power to convey moods and feelings
like when people say, “He was green with envy,” “I’m feeling blue” or “She
was red hot, she was so mad”. Grey is associated with boredom; purple
becomes the colour of royalty and white becomes the colour of purity.
Colour is also used to organize life and bring order, like stop lights, or yellow
versus white directional stripes on the road, or when some very organized
people colour code things everything from books to Tupperware.
Examples of the importance of colour might be politicians wearing a red tie to
communicate power and authority. Or Hillary Clinton choosing a purple suit on
the day she gave her 2016 presidential election concession speech. Purple being
a mix of red and blue, the colours associated with the Democratic and
Republican parties, symbolizing unity and a desire to move forward. Many
colour therapists will tell you never to paint your bedroom red because it can
hinder sleep and disrupt the brain as you are trying to relax and fall asleep.
Quoting, Wassily Kandinsky “Colour directly influences the soul. Colour is the
keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the piano with many strings.
The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to
cause vibrations in the soul.”