colour is a feeling

one of more to come.

some moments ask me to stay, others ask me to step back. ive learned that this feeling — the feeling of a lot — comes from listening.

ive spent years and years around images, rooms, textiles, places. talking with people who love colour and people who don’t feel at ease with colour, and many, many, many who say they don’t really understand colour at all.

my uncle for example, like many, is colourblind. ive always been intrigues by how he sees the world. or perhaps more truthfully, how he experiences it. colour is never universal. we don’t receive it the same way. each of us meets colour through our own body, memory and sensitivity.

from my experience and my own eyes. i learned to articulate something that feels important. primary colours speak loudly. red wants to be felt. blue wants to be known. yellow wants to shine. when they arrive together all at once, they don’t wait their turn. each one asks for attention. and our eyes don’t know where to land. there is excitement yes, but also tension. a kind of visual noise. for some people this noise feels joyful. for others it feels like standing too close to music and i didn’t always have words for this. i only knew the sensation. a need to step back. to soften, to breathe.

this is often why I turn naturally turn toward black and white or toward quieter colour. because I want feeling to deepen. for me personally, when colour steps aside, light begins to speak. shadows stretch. and somehow texture remembers its own story. space opens.

colour is a feeling. by sarah jessica marie burns

in conversations with people who admit they don’t understand colour, I tell them I can explain what ive learnt from my observations and experience, but you don’t need to understand it. you only need to notice how your body responds. does it feel calm? does it feel alert? does it feel full or does it feel crowded. I believe colour is emotional before intellectual.

some colours carry themselves in a way that cannot be forced into another shape. red, green and alive against white, have their own energy, their own tension. trying to turn them into soft, earthy, muted, flattens the energy. the vibrancy, the dialogue between the hues, the way they make the eye move, all gets lost. colour isn’t just a surface, it is motion. it is feeling. it is the way light and space meet. when we try to impose something it is not, it resists. insistently, like a piano note that will never be played in a different key.

primary colours are honest yet. they don’t hide. they don’t blur. they declare. and sometimes declaration is exactly what a moment needs — a market, a celebration. a street alive with voices. but sometimes a moment asks for listening. and listening often happens in the quieter places where colour is restrained, where contrast is gentle and where the eye can rest and the heart can wander.

i don’t think one way is better than the other. i believe we are allowed to choose the atmosphere we want to live inside. for me softness creates space. and space allows feeling to arrive slowly. and stay.

i love when people talk about colour before a shoot.not to get it ‘right’ but to meet it, to notice it. to feel how it will live in the space. colour deserves curiosity. colour deserves conversation. light does too but these are musings for another moment.

with love and colour,

sarah jessica marie burns xx