What We're Reading Now

Colors Can Lift Your Spirits

27 August 2024

Barbara listened to the podcast Friday Fix: Surprising Ways Colors Affect How You Feel and Behave by Amy Morin, LCSW and was comforted to know other people feel as passionately about color as she does.

Tags: barbara read, creativity, grieving, mental health

As my Tuesday to blog approached, I hunted for articles that would give me an excuse to post my finished painting on social media sites. I found a good podcast and several articles. Amy Morin, LCSW goes a little further in her podcast than I agree with saying color affects how much and how fast you eat, but some of what she wrote was spot on for my life. “Color evokes emotion. We know the way you feel influences how you think and how you act.”

She also linked to Kendra Cherry, MSEd’s article, Color Psychology: Does It Affect How You Feel? who wrote, “Artists and interior designers have long believed that color can dramatically affect moods, feelings, and emotions.”

Everything I read and listened to had a least one sentence saying the research is not definitive, but the influence of color on me is so strong, I decided it was worth writing about because I believe the importance of color might be useful to some of our readers, too. 

Specific colors make me happy—red, blue, green, hot pink, purple; the brown of mahogany wood, the gleam of brass. The neutral gray theme recommended by decorators for the last few years looks fabulous in other people’s homes, but it doesn’t speak to me. The people  who decorate with it know just the right pop of color to add and I think are soothed by its peaceful neutrality, but I crave more color

Fifty years ago, I chose a Henredon sofa and two wing back chairs in a bright red, blue, green and white floral print for the living room that had been empty for a year in our first house. It was expensive high-end furniture in 1974, and the trend was to put the same fabric on all three pieces. I have no desire to reupholster them even though a few decorators have commented that they were outdated. “They will see me through,” as  the elderly main  character in The Shell Seekers said about her chintz sofa and chairs. The shape of the wing backs and the “matchy-matchy“ colors may be out of style, but they give me pleasure every single day, and the older I get the less I worry about pleasing anyone but myself.

I’ve been going to art class at The Center almost weekly for almost two years to get a color fix. Working with oil paint colors—alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, green earth, cadmium red—helped me grieve the death of my husband, learn to be happy living alone, and showed me I could still paint after carpal and cubital tunnel surgery in both arms and other age-related ailments with my hands. I didn’t think I’d be able to get my fingers to control a brush again but was so excited and relieved to discover I could.

In class if I’m painting rocks, which I find boring, but they are in front of mountains which I love, I might have to throw in a bright red flower in the foreground to keep me going even if it is too soon in the painting to do so. I’ll just work around the color that always cheers me.

I asked my daughter-in-law for some reference photographs for me to paint. She sent me a night-time photo of the Queensboro Bridge and the New York City skyline. It was the view out her apartment window when she lived in NYC for the first 16 years of her life.

A few minutes after she sent the first photo, she sent another that had the same angle but with the coloring effects of the setting sun and the bridge lights turned on. That one made my heart jump, and I texted back, “I always like a little red with my blue.” I quickly bought a 24” x 36” canvas and began.

I have had so much fun putting in things that were not in the photo, taking out things I didn’t like and dabbing dots of color all over the canvas—red, orange, yellow, pink, purple on a painting with lots of blue.

Another article I read in The New York Times, How the Arts Can Benefit Your Mental Health (No Talent Required), recommended coloring in the lines of a mandala as a calming practice and a way to reduce stress.

About midway through my NYC painting, I decided I wanted the sky behind the bridge to be lighter. I didn’t want to just wipe out that part of the bridge and do it all again, so I decided to put lighter blue between some of the cables. It was coloring in my own lines the way you would color in a mandala. It was soothing in a different way than painting other parts of the canvas when I was making decisions about big brush strokes.

My search for articles to explain how colors heal me made me know I’m not alone when it comes seeking out color as a source of happiness.

How could you turn to colors for joy and healing in your life?

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