Don't get even, get color. One of our favorite writers at The Times, Penelope Green (because she wrote about us - and she's good), had this story this weekend: Design Therapy and Self-Discovery.
Therapy is everywhere these days, but this story makes it so nicely clear how effective renovating and color is in cheering us up.
The subject of this story, Grace Jeffers, a nice young woman on the Upper West Side, discovers at the end of a long term relationship that her boyfriend has been cheating on her "for years," and goes into a tailspin, only to rescue herself by buying a womb chair and refocusing on her apartment....with color. This is the die hard approach of a desgin junkie:
"The best way to break with the past is with design," she said, "to ask yourself who you are, and then express that down to the nuts and bolts, the hinges and cabinet knobs, of your home."
What she has done, creating this "shiny, half-laminate, pink, blue and orange 700-square-foot one-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive," requires reading, while the bright colors will lift you up right away.
On a similar note, lately we have heard of other stories where a single color has cured a spiralling breakup depression and become a symbol of empowerment. In both cases the color was......Yellow.
Yellow is sun, light, warmth and butter. What could be better? MGR
I really like the "wood grain" on the desk in the final picture in her slideshow.
Woah I've been completely craving yellow (and green) for the past months. I had meant to go to Pearl Paint today and get a tub of yellow paint, too.
Did you know the REAL butter is white and yellow butter is made with food dye?! I thought of yellow but yellow is know to be a stimulant to the adrenal glands. Green! Now that was the only other truly healing color I did not use. - Check out "Color, Environment & Human Response" by Frank Mahnke.
Could it be the waning light of autumn? I've been craving color, too. I painted my dark hallway a bright lemony yellow a few years back. It's far from serene and needs a touchup, but it still makes me happy to see such sunny brightness. Now I'm fixing up my study - a tiny room off said hallway with no windows. Not sure what color to use to make it feel light and airy but still give it a serenity that would be conducive to concentration. Any suggestions? (Grace, great photos, and thanks for the book suggestion.)
I always heard people fight a lot in yellow rooms. And they paint rooms in prisons pink because it is very calming, not to mention flattering to all skin tones. Meanwhile, green is supposed to be the color of change (though not flattering to most skin tones, as I can attest having attended some weddings in greenhouses and seen the photos resulting) and Grace Jeffer's apartment (which I have been in) feels large, and very peaceful both in spite of the "happy colors" and proximity to the highway on the other side of the park. The blue in the bedroom is the exact color of a clear New York cloudless sky. Go Grace!
non-factory butter varies in color from nearly white to very yellow depending on what the cows have been eating, especially if they are field kept and eat seasonal grasses and weeds. Most industrial farming butter tries to keep to a certain shade and uses annatto, a spice from a southern and central American bush, or turmeric, an asian spice from an underground rhizome related to ginger. I've been a foodie and have been reading labels for years, American butter is very regulated and I'd be very surprised if synthetic dyes are allowed as colorants for butter.
Almanzo's mother in Farm Boy (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) used to color her prize-winning butter with carrot juice, if I remember correctly.
I meant Farmer Boy, of course.
I loved the idea of a stylish small refrigerator with a freezer on the bottom like the one Grace mentioned in the NYT audio story. Did anyone catch the brand though -- it sounded like "Lieber," but I haven't been able to find any company even close. Any suggestions?
Can anyone tell me who created that yellow painting? And where I can find a print of it or more of that artist's work?