Words and colors

  

   I am a huge fan of words and the many shades of meaning between words. I also love to describe and name my art pieces according to their color group. This is why I was delighted to find a lovely chart called the color thesaurus by Ingrid Sandberg.

     Seeing the color thesaurus brings up the question “ why would I describe a jewelry piece as white when I could paint a imaginative image in the reader’s mind if  I call it eggshell, porcelain or chiffon? After all, if you’ve ever strolled the aisle of paint colors you know there are a zillion shades of white.

     Once a friend asked if I would come help her decide a color to have her living room painted. Being a student of color and an ambitious professional artist, I agreed to meet her in her home. All the way over to her house I was drilling my mind with everything I could remember about colors and their psychological effects. I got to her house and she showed me the room, then presented several swatches of paint samples she had considered. To my dismay, all the paint samples were WHITE!! I’m thinking to myself, she had me come all the way across town, missing a day of work in my studio, for THIS? Yeesh!

    We looked at each color, considering it for her walls, and I started to see how each white offered its own effect and mood. We even made a separate trip to the paint store to consider more options of white.  The effect she wanted was warm, welcoming and quiet.
We discovered there is a big difference between pearl, alabaster, snow, ivory, cream and cotton, to name a few. Some whites are too clinical, others too stark. Our color search became a project that required more energy and focus than I ever would have thought.

A few weeks later when I visited her in her newly painted living room, I was pleasantly surprised by the warm and inviting feel of the room. We definitely chose the right white!

At first blush some of the paint films I peel and upcycle into jewelry have very little interest. At other times I look at the dried paint and am reminded of my friend’s living room. It was just white,  after all, what’s the big deal? Here’s some of my recent favorites and their descriptive names:

Carmel bracelet

Dove earrings 

Dove necklace

Cafe au Lait necklace 

It’s all about words and colors, and what is evoked in the mind.

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Parts of Art piece, visit my online shop here.