An absence of colour

I have had considerable ‘tellings off’ about not blogging and I know that if I don’t do it now, then I never will. I hope I remember how? I suppose I haven't felt that I have had anything to 'blog' about lately ... but ...

I’ve been to ‘Art and Garden’ today - a beautiful, sunny day, the lush garden, the sound of the river and such colour on display! Lots of paintings and jewellery and some textiles and, of course, Jackie’s stall, so full of colourful brooches, books, pictures, bags and so many other gorgeous things. Now I’ve no money left but I have got three very colourful brooches.

I have had Jackie’s post about ‘paintboxes’ on my mind ever since I read it. It took me straight back to my childhood! I could see the paintbox I had, with all those wonderful names …

Yes, ‘Rose Madder’ and ‘Cobalt Blue’ and ‘Violet’, but what about ‘Vermillion’? That surely is the name that instantly transports me back sixty years. The things I actually painted with this magical box of colours have faded into the distance (I suspect that even then they weren’t ‘originals’, more country cottages and landscapes and ‘fashion plates’ – the ‘New Look’ anyone???) but it’s the colours that stay with me …

How I longed to swim in an ocean of ‘Ultramarine’ …. And wear a dress (long, made of velvet, with a ‘fishtail’?) in ‘Viridian’ (shades of Rita Heyworth?) … and what a wonderful sight a ‘Scarlet Lake’ would be? … and ‘Prussian Blue’ sounded so exotic. I could go on … 

Does anyone out there who is my age remember any of these things? The world at that time seemed such a drab and colourless place that the paintbox seemed truly to be a ‘box of delights’.

My parents had been in India before the war and the stories they told me all seemed to be steeped in colour and I longed to go there and see for myself. It was to be sixty years before this dream came to fruition but the reality was just as I imagined it. My abiding memory is of a dull brown landscape which would suddenly explode into the colours of my paintbox as the women working in the fields came into view. Full circle.

Which is probably why the piece (above) which I – finally – produced for the Embroidery 2000 exhibition at Lytham felt so unsatisfactory to me. It was ‘colourless’. Dictionary definition – not only “not colourful” but “lacking vividness or distinctive character”. I should know that I don’t do ‘subtle’. There isn’t a single piece of beige in my wardrobe - and brown and I just don’t 'get on'. So why would I want to produce a piece with ‘earth colours’? Maybe I’ll just use the same design source with the colours that make me feel alive? Schiaperelli’s zinging pink or the violet of the delphinium that trumpets that summer is here? Or the deep aquamarine of the Greek ocean …

To thine own self be true? Watch this space …