Color Relations

Meditations on how we see, feel, and become through color

Ronan McKenzie for Atmos

Hi fam,

Happy new year! It feels like a huge weight just fell off my back as we entered 2025. I feel lighter, more empowered, and most importantly - free to create art without worrying if it's "liked" or not. It simply is what it is.

I've been thinking a lot about color lately. While looking through my past work as curator and art director, I fell in love with Ronan McKenzie's beautiful exploration of color, light, and colorism. Her work featured women of diverse races and backgrounds moving playfully through a house designed by architect Remi Connolly-Taylor. The house itself is a meditation on light - built with local materials, it uses light and depth to create this amazing sense of space that just draws you in.

It reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Federico García Lorca:

Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña.

Color has always fascinated me. Not just how it looks, but what it means to us, how it makes us feel, how it changes depending on where we are and who we're with. Philosophers and artists have been captivated by this too - from Josef Albers showing us how colors transform each other (that same blue looks completely different depending on what's next to it!) to Jonathan Cohen's beautiful idea that color isn't just a fixed property, but a relationship between object, observer, and environment.

(Life hack: the official "Interaction of Color" app developed by Yale University from Josef Albers interaction of color theory)

The Relationships of Color

There's this beautiful idea that colors aren't fixed things - they're relationships. A rose isn't just "red" on its own. Its redness comes from how the light hits it, how our eyes see it, what's around it. It's like we're all in this dance together - us, the light, the objects, the space around us. We're constantly being shaped by our environment, our location, what we see, and how we see it.

(In photography, it’s 70% light and 30% camera. Light and how it reflects color make up what you focus on and how you make up your images.)

Ronan McKenzie for Atmos

I love this way of thinking because it shows there's no such thing as getting color "wrong." We all see things differently depending on where we are, who we are, what's around us - and that's exactly how it should be. It's like how the same song can feel completely different depending on where you hear it and what's happening in your life at that moment.

We relate therefore we are of a certain hue.

The natural world gets this instinctively. Think about how colors in nature are always telling us something - when fruit is ripe, when seasons are changing, when it's time to wake up or go to sleep. James Gibson’s "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception" argues that color perceptions evolved mainly as a way to detect meaningful properties in our environment. The relationships between our perceptions, our relationships, and our environment are truly what drive how we experience color and therefore the world.

While Cohen sees color as a relation between perceiver and environment, James Gibson would say that the information is already there in the environment, waiting to be picked up. Either way, we are the result of relations. Of how we are in relation to what’s out there.

As Pablo Neruda shows us when he writes about yellow flowers, our relationship with color is deeply rooted in our connection to the earth itself.

I've been communing with Mother Earth these past

few days

communicating with moss, & mushrooms, with rocks,

trees, & oak leaves

the wind is singing a song and I understand

But mostly, I've heard from our waters.

The ceaseless changing flow—our fluid nature is born

from streams, lakes, waterfalls.

I often consider the push-pull nature, the dance, the

ebb and flow that we see in ocean tides + rainstorms;

but waterfalls share a different story.

ocean tides are a story of death and rebirth

they are leaves that change color every year, those

that die and are reborn again come spring

they are a generation of new children

ocean tides are the rise and fall of every new day

But waterfalls are roots growing

wrinkles forming

the universe expanding

In what direction do waterfalls flow? As ripeness comes to fruit!

(Naturally, and withtout end.)

- Pablo Neruda, Ode to Yellow Flowers

The way we see and experience color is so much more than just visual - it's emotional, it's relational, it's about how we connect with everything around us. The colors we're drawn to, the ones that make us feel safe or excited or calm - they're all part of how we relate to the world.

But waterfalls are roots growing

wrinkles forming

the universe expanding

So I'm curious - how does color show up in your life? How does it affect the way you work, the way you move through your day? Do certain colors bring up specific emotions or memories for you?

As Toni Morrison said in The Bluest Eye, "Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do."

What if color isn't just something we see, but something we actively participate in? What if it's one of the threads that connects the physical, emotional, and spiritual parts of our lives? I believe it is.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this. How do colors shape your world?

Until next time,

Lola

✨ New for 2025: I'm excited to share that paid subscribers will now receive a special monthly digest where I'll gather all the things that have sparked my curiosity - books that moved me, music, insights, visual gluttony. Think of it as a carefully curated collection of inspirations, just for you.

This publication is entirely supported by readers like you. If these words resonate and you'd like to support this work while getting access to the monthly inspiration digest, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Much love, may your days be filled with colors that speak to your soul.

Blue playlist, mood-boards and other goodies for this week!