The Emotional Effects of Colors in our lives

Color truly has an impact on our lives, and often in unconscious and mysterious ways. Colors can create conditions that can

• cause fatigue
• increase stress
• decrease visual perception
• damage eyesight damage eyesight
• increase possible worker errors
• negatively affect orientation and safety

A color circle, based on red, yellow and blue, is traditional in the field of art. Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666. In visual experiences, color harmony is something that is pleasing to the eye. It engages the viewer and it creates an inner sense of order, a balance in the visual experience. When something is not harmonious, it's either boring or chaotic.

Colors act upon the body as well as the mind. Red has been shown to stimulate the senses and raise the blood pressure. Where as Blue has the opposite effect and calms the mind. It seems People will gamble more and make riskier bets when seated under a red light as opposed to a blue light.

While painting, using warm colors for foreground and cool colors for background colors for background enhances the perception of depth.Use of color as a therapy has a long history– ancient Egyptians and Greeks built healing temples of light and color – use of color became deeply embedded in Chinese and Indian medicine.

Actual physiological changes take place in human beings when they are exposed to certain colors.Colors can – stimulate, excite, depress, tranquilize, increase appetite and create a feeling of warmth or coolness.

An executive for a paint company received complaints from workers in a blue office that the office was too cold. When the offices were painted a warm peach, the sweaters came off even though the temperature had not changed.

Each color has many aspects to it, but we can easily learn the language of color by understanding a few simple concepts which relate to the body, mind, and emotions. What have scientists learned about how our thoughts and behaviors are influenced by the colors we see? What does the color we choose say about us?

Red: Physical

Positive: Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy, basic survival, 'fight or flight', stimulation, masculinity, excitement.

Negative: Defiance, aggression, visual impact, strain.

Blue: Intellectual.

Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm.

Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness.

Yellow: Emotional

Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity.

Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide.

Green: Balance

Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.

Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation.

Violet: Spiritual

Positive: Spiritual awareness, containment, vision, luxury, authenticity, truth, quality.

Negative: Introversion, decadence, suppression, inferiority.

Orange: stimulating

Positive: Physical comfort, food, warmth, security, sensuality, passion, abundance, fun.

Negative: Deprivation, frustration, frivolity, immaturity.

Pink: soothes

Positive: Physical tranquility, nurture, warmth, femininity, love, sexuality, survival of the species.

Negative: Inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, physical weakness.

Grey: suppressive

Positive: Psychological neutrality.

Negative: Lack of confidence, dampness, depression, hibernation, lack of energy.

Black: absorption

Positive: Sophistication, glamour, security, emotional safety, efficiency, substance.

Negative: Oppression, coldness, menace, heaviness.

White: reflection

Positive: Hygiene, sterility, clarity, purity, cleanness, simplicity, sophistication, efficiency.

Negative: Sterility, coldness, barriers, unfriendliness, elitism.

Brown: Supportive

Positive: Seriousness, warmth, Nature, earthiness, reliability, support.

Negative: Lack of humor, heaviness, lack of sophistication.

Indigo: intuition and perception and the higher mind.

Positive: Powerful and dignified, integrity and deep sincerity.

Negative: intolerant and prejudiced, fanaticism and addiction.

Turquoise: emotional balance and stability.

Positive: peace, calm and tranquility.

Negative: boastful and narcissistic.

Silver: fluid, emotional, sensitive and mysterious. It is soothing, calming and purifying.

Positive: inspires intuition, clairvoyance and mental telepathy.

Negative: indecisive and non-committal, dull and lifeless, neutral, cold and insincere, deceptive and two-faced.

Gold: success, achievement and triumph.

Positive: abundance and prosperity, luxury and quality, prestige and sophistication, value and elegance.

Negative: egotistical, self-righteous and opportunistic.

Though this guide to the special “powers” of particular colors make our mind pop, we have to use color and not opt out and live in a under- stimulating beige world.

Addiction in Art - Smoking

Mayas were perhaps the first people to represent tobacco smoking in art. Numerous depictions of smoking can be found from the Mayan era. Deities, kings and shamans are often depicted smoking in Mayan art and iconography.

During the 17th century, Dutch paintings with pipes symbolized misfortune. The Dutch artists meant to send a moral message that foolish behaviors like smoking will lead people into hardships.

Smoking’s prevalence among sailors, soldiers, and the rural poor along with its intoxicating effects led to an association with the lowliest people. Thus, smoking became a tool for artists to designate someone’s rank in society, and painters including Adriaen Brouwer, the Ostade brothers, and David Teniers II employed smoking in their portrayals of the low classes. Smoking also became a comedic prop for painters especially in festival and burlesque paintings.The impressionists painted scenes of everyday life that included cigars, cigarettes, or pipes, but they did not put symbolic importance in them. The post-impressionists returned symbolic meaning to smoking instruments.

Vincent van Gogh’s painting, Skull with a Burning Cigarette was a notable one which seems as an anti-smoking warning.Vincent van Gogh says in The Letters,Van Gogh Museum. "Now you well understand that if alcohol was certainly one of the great causes of my madness, then it came very slowly and would go away slowly too, should it go, of course. Or if it comes from smoking, same thing."This was produced in a time when Van Gogh's health was poor (due to stomach ailments and rotting teeth) and may reflect Vincent's own concerns about his state of well-being. Some interpret the work as being a statement of defiance against Vincent's faltering health.

 

Various forms of modern art have also included cigarettes. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City displayed Jac Leiner’s Lung in March 2009. This piece features 1200 Marlboro packs neatly folded and strung together. Leiner illustrates her own personal addiction by presenting the sickening amount of cigarettes that she unconsciously consumed over three years.

Another example called Why Can’t I Stop Smoking is on display at the St. Louis Art Museum,by Artist Sigmar Polke.This piece portrays an incompletely painted man on a large canvas with the title of the painting written across the top. It demonstrates the addictive power of cigarettes because the artist cannot overcome the addiction to finish something that he presumably loves to do: paint.An archetype in this piece could be The Test or Trial because the man is trying to quit smoking.

Artists worked out that smoking represented death centuries before doctors did. In Philip Guston's painting, The Hand: a hairy wrist thrusts from nowhere into air the color of ash. A cigarette is clamped between stubby fingers, and a wristwatch tells us it is four in the morning. Time is getting very short. Guston painted this in the last year of his life.

Smoking was in no way associated with death in English Painter William Hogarth's day - no studies had yet proved anything bad about it - yet he intuitively associates it with decay and decline, with time running out. He engraved a single word coming out of Time's mouth: "Finis", meaning the end. It looks like a puff of cigarette smoke.

For the truly cultured smoker, smoking is about knowing you will die. It is about acknowledging the fragility of your body and the marvelous terror of addiction. Every time they finish a cigarette they think about death.

Then why can’t they stop smoking?

Schizophrenic Artists

Some of the world's leading artists, writers and theorists have had mental illnesses - the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and Norwegian Edvard Munch to name just two.

Vincent van Gogh battled severe depression, and famously cut off his own ear. In spite or perhaps because of his troubles, he created legendary masterpieces, such as his "Sunflowers" series.

Paul Gauguin, a close friend of Van Gogh, also experienced severe bouts of depression and tried to end his life. He left his native France for Tahiti, where he produced a series of sensual paintings such as "The Spirit of the Dead Watch".

Celebrated Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's life was fraught with anxiety and hallucinations.Munch described his inspiration for his painting The Scream:Shown left.

One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord ,the sun began to set - suddenly the sky turned blood red, he wrote. I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature. it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.

Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goyay Lucientes was another famous artist who succumbed to a serious case of the blues. His paintings often depicted images of insanity.Shown left is one of his black painting -  Saturn Devouring his Son.(shown right). It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children,ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and has since been held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

 Legendary artist Pablo Picasso is said to have struggled with depression. That didn't stop him from producing canvasses of vivid and explosive color, such as '"weeping women" (shown left).The model for the painting, indeed for the entire series, was Dora Maar, who was working as a professional photographer when Picasso met her in 1936; she was the only photographer allowed to document the successive stages of Guernica while Picasso painted it in 1937.

"Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman.And it's important, because women are suffering machines."explained Picasso about his model.

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric institution in the 1970s, where she became a permanent resident. Obsessive themes are dominant in her work, and her installations.Her installation named Narcissus Garden (shown right)-The tightly arranged 1,500 shimmering balls constructed an infinite reflective field in which the images of the artist, the visitors, the architecture, and the landscape were repeated, distorted, and projected by the convex mirror surfaces that produced virtual images appearing closer and smaller than reality. The size of each sphere was similar to that of a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. When gazing into it, the viewer only saw his/her own reflection staring back, forcing a confrontation with one's own vanity and ego.

We may never know what it's like to be in the mind of someone suffering from schizophrenia. The closest thing we may ever have is art like this. Much of this art may look scary and negative, but the act of setting the anxieties to paper is a positive for the artists.

Schizophrenia is an intense and unforgiving mental disorder whose symptoms can include everything from abnormal social behaviors, to hearing voices, and not knowing what's real. It often accompanies other, less severe mental conditions like depression and anxiety.

But there are some who have turned to something far less harmful to cope with their condition: art.

Karen May Sorensen recently began pushing the boundaries of her "madness," by posting drawings and paintings on her blog while on varying levels of medication.(shown right)

While some of them may be disturbing to look at, for their creators these works help to visualize the unrest in their heads. This makes the harsh consistency of their thoughts a little more bearable. Except the fact that one major characteristic of schizophrenia is that they don't realize they're ill, so for them there aren't hallucinations or voices in their heads, they're extremely convinced that all of this is real.

Spooky, strange, but probably an accurate portrayal of schizophrenia feels like on the inside.(shown left)

The most wrong thing to do is trying to convince them they aren’t real. Because they see them, they are real to them. And no amount of "you aren’t real" will change it. But to give power over them, put them in control of the voices/sights. Make it so they can keep them in line, they are the master, not the hallucination. Basically you can’t get rid of them, but you can be the master in the situation. They work for you, you don’t work for them.

Introducing children to art

‘Every child is an artist.

The problem is how

To remain an artist

Once he grows up.’

Pablo Picasso, visual artist

The visual arts are two distinct activities, art making and art appreciation. The first is about expressing ideas while the latter is more about responding to art. Both are important ways of learning and should be supported and valued by us parents. Art educators say it's never too early to introduce kids to art through books, projects, and museum visits.

We can find artistic expressions everywhere, from illustrations in children’s books to images on calendars to decorative artwork displayed in homes, schools, and parks. Look for art and symbols in everyday life. Point out beautiful wall papers, mosaics, stop signs, and store windows, and discuss what the colors, shapes, and images tell us. Encourage your child to create a story by drawing, cutting, and gluing pictures and then have you guess what the story is. Early experiences with the visual arts foster important skills while providing a sense of joy and excitement that can last a lifetime.

Art appreciation begins with the simple yet common practice of telling stories to young children from book with illustrations. I remember story telling time with my 3 year old daughter. Those days there was a children’s magazine, Young Times, which was a weekly edition. I used to make different stories every day, with the illustrations in it, till the next edition comes.

For younger children, art is often more about the process of exploring

materials than about creating an end product. Exploration should be

valued for its contribution to self-expression and to learning. Simply saying, “Would you like to tell me about your art?” gives a child the freedom to talk about the work from his or her own point of view. It is important to respect the child’s motives, preferences, and aims. Parents should not force their children to do the type of art they like.

At home have your child sketch portraits or let them try their hand at landscapes by looking out a window, going into the backyard, or visiting a park. Kids feel they can't do art if they can't draw realistically. Drawing with them helps them see that it doesn't have to be perfect and that one image can be seen in lots of different ways.

It is important that children know and understand the importance of art in our world. Not only will they gain an appreciation for the work of others, but it will open their minds and allow them to create their own masterpieces.

Share and enjoy art with your children.