Yellow, Red, and Orange, Oh My

She swiped her paintbrush through her palette before returning to the canvas.

It was late. It was usually late when she worked on a project. No one was around to interrupt her thoughts by asking questions, and the quiet really did help her collect her them accurately. Right now all she could think about was color and the theory of color evoking feelings.

It was interesting to hear non-artists describe the world around them. Everything was such simple when it came to colors; the sky was blue, the grass was green, and the tree bark was brown. But an artist saw multiple colors in various shades and hues. The sky wasn’t just blue, it was purple, white, and green. Sometimes red, orange, yellow, purple, pink, and white. A non-artist believed the world was black and white, and an artist believed in shades of gray. She knew that some people were trained to see these colors while others came by the talent naturally. She was not a natural talent, and the thought upset her very much.

She had spent all four years of high school in the art room, trying to learn as much as she could. It probably would have been helpful if the teacher had actually taught something, but it was a known fact that the art teacher was useless. The school was old and the administration had put the room in what was basically a jail cell. Stone walls that no sound penetrated through, not even the fire alarm. It was a terrible art room, in that it had no windows for any natural light, but to her, the art room was an escape. The students that came in never stayed, and because the room was so small, she could hide behind the sink and no one would bother her. There were never enough seats so she spent her hours sitting on the cold floor. She thought it was perfect.

Then she went to college and found out just how horribly wrong she was. Here, they wanted everyone to know different artists, styles, and have their work have meaning. Whereas she just wanted to paint, and so she clashed with her professors. Right now it was her painting instructor, who wanted a painting that was designed to evoke powerful feelings in the viewer. So he pulled out examples of historical art and spoke at length of the feelings and how the artist portrayed those feelings, what techniques did he use. She fell in love with Vincent Van Gogh’s flowery paintings. Not his sunflowers, though, those were scary to her because they looked deranged. But his Almond Blossoms were beautiful, calming, and tangled. Like her life.

Unfortunately, she felt more angry than calm and so she had looked up psychology of color and used that theory to assist in displaying her emotions. Red to show how passionate she was about this project, but also how angry she was. She wanted people to stop and stare at the artwork and say “It’s brilliant”, or at least tell her she had potential. She didn’t have the formal, or even proper training like many of the other students but she was eager to learn, possibly more so than others. Yellow needed to be added, though, to show happiness. She was happy with her paintings, until she got to class with them and the professor called her a child. But in the safety and quiet of the night, painting allowed her to be calm, to review her day and think of how it could have gone differently. Painting allowed her to escape into colors, straight lines, crooked lines, and blobs. It allowed her to find her own perspective. And when the red and yellow blended to become orange, according to the psychology, it should show two unlikely things being creative. What could be more creative than anger and happiness together?

She sighed as she put down her brushes. She wasn’t sure if the professor would see and feel what she did, he hadn't so far this semester. But as she stepped back to admire the bright painting, the Shakespeare quote, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” popped into her head. She knew that Shakespeare meant that a rose is still a rose by its smell, but could a rose still be a rose by any other name based it’s color as well? She hoped so, because she really loved this bright, angry, happy, marigold.