In 1968, right after I graduated from college, I was maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding. I had a really pretty yellow dress for the rehearsal dinner (the less said the better about the dresses we attendants wore for the wedding). Then yellow disappeared. I cannot recall anything yellow I wore for 51 years after that event. The reason? None really though when I “had my colors done” sometime in the late 80s the woman told me I was a winter and that yellow was one of the colors that was not good on me. Or maybe I was afraid it would make me stand out too much – there is nothing subtle about bright yellow. Anyway a month or so ago I saw a bright yellow blouse and fell in love with it, the very blouse you see me wearing there on the right.
It has been as if yellow has returned from exile somewhere, from the Underworld maybe. I have had a big dream about daffodils. In contemplating something I want to knit, yellow was the only color that caught my eye. Looking at the DyeForYarn Etsy shop where I love to find yarn, this skein jumped into my basket and is on its way from Germany to me now –
Yellow of course is a color of spring and of egg yolks, both indicative of new life. Dandelions
There is another aspect of yellow — aging. Think about the yellowing of paper and linen as they age. And another — the yellow we attach to cowardice. Remember the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon”? Yellow journalism. And there are many other associations one can make to yellow — like the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilpin, which if you haven’t read, do follow the link where you will find a full text of the story. There are at least 2 film versions of it also.
I am more a writer and knitter than a painter, but even there yellow has stormed in and is demanding time from me. So off I go to sit at my painting table and see what yellow wants to say to me. I suspect it is about Persephone who in getting lost in the yellow of daffodils was abducted by Hades to the Underworld.
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