Photos by Fred R. Conrad for the NY Times
In today's NY Times Home section I happened to notice a piece, The Color of Comfort, by Fred Bernstein about writer John Patrick Shanley. Apparently Mr. Shanley feels the same way I do about color: one needs to have it in one's life. Lots of it, fact. And I am talking REAL COLOR, not LET'S-PRETEND-WE-HAVE-COLOR color.
Let me go on the record right here: I am truly tired with the color trends of the last few years of design. I find it annoying to try and refer to the palest of shades as a color, and then figure out which color it is. Is is barely aqua or is it barely grey or maybe the palest of greens? For me if you need something equal to an operating room light to determine which hue you have, then you don't have a hue at all. Or maybe, I should say, you don't have a clue at all. Go out on a limb with some real color in your house, for God's sake. Guess what: Sometimes subtlety in decorating is just another name for wishy washy.
In reading about Mr. Shanely (who, among many other things, wrote the original screenplay for Moonstruck, which is reason alone for me to love him), I found that I share his same preoccupation with color. He has a memory of staring at an illuminated Christmas tree in a window as a kid, in love with the changing colors. I used to do that with those wonderfully tacky aluminum trees with the colored spotlights on them. I also clearly remember spending hours studying the granny square crocheted coverlet my aunt made, trying to decided which color combos I Iiked best. And don't even get me going about Disney's Sleeping Beauty with the three fairies who were always engaging in their version of color wars. Whoa. I loved that movie for that part alone.
So, can we finally get rid of these washed out shades of nothingness in decorating? Looking for some inspiration? Check out the slide show of John Patrick Shanley's place. And then if that isn't enough, here is a hint: how do your spell C-R-A-Y-O-LA ?
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