Art Attack – Welcome to Howard Johnson’s
John Rankine
7/25/2013
There’s a reason it’s been 15 years since I last painted the interior of my home. It was stressful, chaotic, neck straining and consumed way more time and energy than I thought.
It started with the bathroom. Family was arriving for a week and I thought how nice to have a freshly painted bathroom when company arrives. My simple two-day project took well over a week, throwing a wrench in my well-planned life.
But it looked so fresh and clean, and with family gone, it was on to the living room.
You would think selecting paint colors would be easier for an artist. Maybe it’s the added pressure of putting your artist cred on the line? While not as difficult or permanent as picking out a tattoo, choosing color for the walls, those walls you will have to live with for a very long time, is challenging. What looks fabulous on those tiny paint chips often translates differently when applied to the wall,
I had decided to go bold. I had not lived with bold since I painted my bedroom purple and lime green in 1969. I was 14.
Color inspiration came from two retro plastic lampshades – one in turquoise, the other bright orange – which I took to Acord’s to have color matched. “Citrus” and a variation of “Calypso Blue” were the results. Who could go wrong? Right?
I now know that orange is a color one should use sparingly, and a color that takes at least three coats of paint to cover any other color besides white, but according to a Feng Shui Website it is “often called the social color, as it creates the feng shui energy to promote lively conversation and good times in your home.”
The orange certainly triggered some “lively conversation” in our home. Walking into the living room felt like walking into a Howard Johnsons in South Florida in the early ‘70s.
Fortunately, the floor to ceiling art work, hung salon style, helped soften the intensity of color and we have made peace that we will be staring at orange and turquoise for at least another 15 years.
Orange is this season’s hot color du jour, what with the new hit series “Orange Is The New Black,” and especially here in Lovely County where anti-SWEPCO signs and t-shirts are all the rage and rage.
Nothing rhymes with orange and nothing, I’ve decided, really goes with it either.
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