Colouring Book

What colours are predominant in our lives? If I close my eyes and imagine a scene from my life, the colours that are prominent are very different from the ones that I see on a day to day basis. But I haven’t lived in New York for very long; once my memories of Vancouver start to fade, the colours of that city will fade to the concrete and brick that surrounds me.

So much of what we see is constructed, and the construction materials of these cities are often different. New York is a much older city than my hometown, and the buildings reflect the styles of the time. Apartments are also more common here; wooden houses are seen less often. Vancouver is noted, and immortalized by the author Douglas Coupland, as a city of glass; New York, despite its skyscraper reputation, has less glass in its construction. It’s not just because I live in Brooklyn and go to school in the village– even in the Financial District and Midtown, the city is less dominated by glass and steel.

Consequently: when I close my eyes, I imagine wooden houses painted in many colours or barely stained, cherry blossom trees lining every street, the greenest grass and flowering bushes, and blue green skyscrapers. This does not reflect my current reality.

I took some pictures over a day to capture the background colours of my current reality. I thankfully have wooden floors at home and ITP, so I do have a break from the greys and pale blues of my life.

I also then applied a mosaic filter to this thumbnail sheet, to get a better sense of the average colours.

Blue, black, white, grey, beige. It’s a very common palette here, and, honestly, they’re the colours that dominate my wardrobe. Maybe I belong here more than Vancouver; I’ve never been in touch with nature and I have been always fond of muted colour schemes. They’re calm, as I would like to be.

There are a few outlier colours here, but some are more notable than others. The purple lighting in one of these photos scream, but that’s just for that plant and not usually on. I don’t think it really reflects my life, particular since it’s not my plant. I also wear a lot of burgundy and that is not included here. It’s rich, but not too loud. I think this does reflect my life.

To cap this off, I’ve created an image to capture the colours of my life.

P.s. I also took the colour hue test, and here are my results: