Before I even start I am going to warn you that I am going into deep thought. And no, I am not going to talk about Light in the Piazza. Not a musical theatre post today I am entering the waters of art. So I'm currently taking an art class at the U of U called Language of Color. Its quite interesting how color is used and how one may perceive colors and the application. The class talks about how color is applied in art and how we perceive, interpret, and analysis a piece of art according to culture, media etc... Within this class we read a book by David Batchelor called Chromophobia. This book is by far one of the most interesting books of I have ever read. It really has forced me to ponder a lot about color and its impact to our world. Its alive and organic.
In the first few pages of the book he talks about this house out in Great Britain. The outside was a red brick victorian look to it but when you went into the house he describes it like entering another universe. The inside was completely white. The white was describe as so pure that no other colors besides grey and black would even look good within the house. What also fascinates me about this house as well is that he describes overall the idea of the house as an inside of an egg. How cool! I highly recommend people reading this book but I am warning you that you need to have an open mind.
This next part I feel is quite important. Thinking of how something as simple as a rainbow can have more inner meaning than we can imagine has always fascinated me. Look beyond what we already know.
Mark Twain states “We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.” His statement I feel is in this sense "prying into that matter" refers to youth verses adults. Youth describe color in marvelous ways. When I talk to kids about color they make it sound like color is alive and moving in an organic and linear matter. We loose that as we grow older sadly. The rainbow is a seven colors of wonder. Youth strikingly find the inner meaning to color. They find life in it. Some kids even live color. As an artist I wish I could have more of that in me.
The rainbow is a source of many meanings. Though ones interpretation may be different we all come to verbal understanding of what we think through communication, science and art. Verbally, Mark Twain statement. "We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter." shows a very important matter to how we communicate what color and the rainbow is. Prying into organic, natural, pure, inconsistent matter sometimes looses the depth of energy. Color is independent. A universal phenomenon. I feel that cannot fully be explained in words because its has life of an unknown semiotic form. There are somethings in this world that cannot always be explained and answered. The rainbow being one of them. We know the basics of Newtons discoveries with the prism and how systems have been made for colors but what if we could look into it even deeper. Understand the feeling, energy, life of color. Even imagining living color. How cool would that be?! If I could understand the rainbow that way I feel I would be living color.
We all will have a different idea to what the rainbow means to us but look at the Beauty of the rainbow. A natural phenomenon that engages the world in so many ways. Appreciate color and live your life with color.
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