There is something to be said of a Creator Who cares enough for our pleasure that He gave us the gift of our senses. They say the gift of smell has the most powerful ties to memory. Maybe. After all, I have wonderful memories that flood my mind when homemade bread, apple pies and other pastries stimulate my olfactory senses. And the TASTE! I have heard that the gift of hearing is the last thing to go when facing death. Touch can bring pain or comfort. But the gift of vision – what a gift! It is so complex that close to a third of our brain is devoted to it.

The emotional impact of color hit me surprisingly this morning. A sunrise this morning greeted me – beautiful, but I was struck by a memory of a 1963 Pontiac Catalina (or was it a Bonneville). When my dad brought it home, the first thing he did was open up the hood – but we were all impressed when he opened the trunk and sat in it with room to spare. A large family on vacation appreciates these points. The mafia would had treasured the roominess of it over resorting to a panel truck. But what hit me this morning was the memory of that deep, deep midnight blue. You know – the color of that blue-black stallion or the almost black suit that draws the viewer in. Detroit knew how to crank out beauties back then. The they knew how to use the baby blues and bubble gum pinks we see in the sky today. Looking at the cars today is very uninspiring.

Life Without Color

Now, using black & white photos is great when I’m checking my values on a difficult subject I’m drawing but- Can you image if we only saw in “black & white?” There would be no need for hair dyes and fabrics would stress pattern over color. TV’s would still be in black & white – let alone HDTV and HGTV would have a fourth of their audience when designers show landscapes in a spectrum of grays.  Function over beauty would be the dominant motivator in design and art would have a totally different focus. (This coming from a graphite artist! But even my eye can see the warmth and coolness of different “leads.”)

I mean, it’s as if you watch I Love Lucy for years and then find out, “She’s a beautiful redhead!” Even when I listen to music, it stirs images of color in my brain. Why is black so grim and domineering while greens are used for calming atmospheres?   It’s hard to imagine that color actually brings out emotional responses but they do.

The eye’s cones are a wonderful gift (I knew there was a reason I loved cones), and we are fortunate that we have cone receptors for red, green and blue; thus able to appreciate 7-10 million different colors! Dogs and some others animals have only two. A few have four and some see wave lengths we can’t – like bees. An interesting website on color is: http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-vision/look-inside-the-eye

So, the next time you are enthralled by a sunset or captivated by the iridescence of an Indigo Bunting (bird) or butterfly, thank God for the ability to see color and ENJOY!