Color

I have about ten thousand paint chips in my house--no exaggeration.   Each time I go to a paint department, I take a handful.

When I first moved to Texas, we visited a painter and poet couple who lived in a house of many colors. The dining table was a picnic table, each chair a different primary color. I remember looking longingly around that house, imagining that one day we would have a house drenched in color.

We had no money--I was a college student and my husband a part-time art instructor by night and an Air Force illustrator by day.  But the former renters of our shabby rent house had left behind a cabinet and we splurged on a quart of green enamel.   That and three paper flowers from the mercado constituted our interior decor.

The Sherwin Williams brochure has 56 whites.  When you put one against another, the brown, pink, or yellow undertones pop out, yet when you see a particular white in isolation, it's just white. Color, like words or notes of music, do what they do in context of the colors next to them, the size of the wall or building, and the light at different times of day.

When I showed Pam a picture of the new brightly colored casita, she wrote: Yes to color! Yes to life! Yes to everything good and wonderful in this amazing universe! Yes with gratitude and thanksgiving! 

I don't just want one color, I want them all.  I'm thinking of gluing a few thousand paint chips on the wall like a mosaic.