Up: [[Art Fundamentals]] Related: [[Sight]] Created: 2022-04-08 Updated: 2026-02-08 From Gretchen Rubin’s *Life in Five Senses*, it turns out that colours have no inherent meanings, no universal effects. Meanings all come from our particular culture, time, place, and personal associations. ### Yellow Yellow, for me, is sunshine, clarity, happiness, essential and mindful ### Orange I’m not a big fan of orange. It lacks the purity and positivity of yellow and the clean energy of red. ### Red Red is fire and creativity to me. It didn’t used to be that way. I used to not especially like red, finding it often a flat colour that sucked up light. But since Hestia, since Tarot, since realizing that fire and creativity are both in my DNA and part of myth, now I like red. ### Purple I like purple, like it in small shots in a painting or worn on my body. But it has so many laid on connotations of royalty and fake mysticism — purple clothing and tarot cloths of fortune tellers — that I don’t use it all that much. ### Blue Blue is one of my favourite colours. To me it is calmness, water, flow, quiet confidence, serenity. ### Green I also really like green. Green is newness, fresh energy, the natural world, beginnings. The word is closely related to the Old English verb growan, ‘to grow’. It is the colour of life and seasonal renewal. The Chinese associate green (and black) with Yin - the passive and receiving principle. Islam venerates green, expecting paradise to be full of lush vegetation. Green is associated with regeneration, fertility, rebirth.