Colour plays a massive part in our daily lives. Every day we are influenced through colour, from traffic lights to working out if food is fresh, colour is usually fundamental. But can colour actually control emotions?
How do artists use colour to express emotions?
In art, artists in all different trades have obsessed about what colour can portray and how it can affect someone’s view of their artwork. There are many books by massively renowned art writers about Colour Theory such as the work by Josef Albers, who contemplated how colour is relative and changes with the relationship to other colours surrounding it. His theories on colour are very interesting as he makes aesthetical comments about placement of colour.
Artists such as abstract painter, Dmitry Art who has centred his practice into the documentation of feelings, moods and emotions, have found that colour plays a big part in how we associate pieces of artwork with different states of feeling.
Colour theorists have deducted that certain colours can make people feel different emotions. These different influences of colour can come down to many different aspects of life, including nature and cultural teaching. For example, as the colour blue is the same as the sky and sea, it can make someone feel calm and relaxed, and green represents nature so can inspire serenity. The colour purple can invoke creativity and has historical representations of wealth and royalty due to culture at the time and the expense/ limited resource of the dye.
Different cultures have unique opinions on colour and continue to make interesting connections with colour. An article from The Independent shows how people in Japan have used colour to predict personality from someone’s birth date. The science and art of mixing colours combined with the psychology behind how emotions are influenced by colour differ from culture to culture as well as individual people – ultimately making it so subjective.
If you are interested in learning more about colour theory, here’s a link to a YouTube video below for more information.
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