The Spirit of Color

After speaking with color visionary Gillian Rose https://www.gillianrosecolour.com, I’ve come to realize that color isn’t simply visual — it’s vibrational. It’s the language the soul uses when words fall short.

When I was a little girl, I had a pair of pink sneakers that I adored. Not hot pink, not pale — but that perfect mid-range pink that made me feel something. I would stare at my feet as I walked, entranced. I didn’t know it then, but I was communing with frequency. That pink had a spirit, and it was talking to me.

Around age seven, I saw a magazine photo of a red and yellow bedroom. I thought it was the most magical thing I’d ever seen. Red and yellow — two colors that vibrate with life, not peace. I didn’t want calm; I wanted aliveness. Those walls felt like they were breathing.

Then came the lavender bedroom of a friend’s mother — a place that made me feel as if I were floating inside a cloud of kindness. Lavender was another presence altogether — soft, healing, and full of light.

Looking back, I realize I’ve always sought color combinations that hum. Even as a child, I loved clashing colors — an orange shirt over a green turtleneck — the friction created a kind of electricity. I was responding to energy long before I had words for it.

At Bowdoin, I once wrote in an art history paper that red and yellow go beautifully together. My professor failed me, insisting it was wrong. But Nature herself whispered otherwise — in tulips, sunsets, and marigolds. I think that’s when I began to trust my inner eye more than any expert.

Now, when I see homes and interiors drained of color — all whites, grays, and beiges — I understand the appeal of calm and control. But to me, they feel like silence. Color is sound. It’s emotion made visible. It’s the invisible world saying I am here.

The older I get, the more I know this to be true:
Color is consciousness.
And when you live surrounded by it, you are in conversation with the divine.