Why are the English so scared of colour?

A lot of people have an uncomfortable relationship with colour, especially a lot of white English people. I acknowledge that my view of this is deeply skewed because I am both white and English, and live in England and so are surrounded by a lot of white English people - but from where I am standing, a lot of ‘them’ do seem to have an uncomfortable relationship with colour. 

Look at the way we use the word ‘colourful’ - for all of the positive sentences ‘it was a wonderfully colourful scene…’ there are just as many where it’s far less joyful. Describing someone as being a ‘colourful character’ is never wholly positive, indicating a range of behaviours from being overly loud on public transport, to being had up for fraud or even violence. A colourful past is one step up from a checkered past, and presumably those checkers are not just black and white ones.

In my distant past, I once attempted to have a bespoke waistcoat made by a tailor who, despite his skill, failed utterly to render my vision into garment form. Of course as I am the aforementioned white Englishwoman, I thanked him for his work and paid up, but when we were still optimistically looking at fabric samples he mentioned that the brighter, more out-there colour choices, were mostly purchased in Southern European countries, where as the British preferred the muted tones of moss, grey and, well, more grey. I suggested that this might perhaps be due to the quality of light in the respective locations - a strong hue comes to life under the unrelenting Italian sun, but can look overly loud on a damp June afternoon. He clapped his hand to his forehead and exclaimed he’d never considered this before, and that I indeed was most profound - though this did not encourage him to do a better job on the waistcoat. 

Perhaps that is it - that bright colours can look a little over the top when compared to the kind of nondescript fuzz of grey we call weather outside our windows, perhaps we, the white, English we, grow homesick for sludge brown and grey green when in brighter climates, forever subconsciously linking these to home?

Of course, the British and many other populations across the world, developed under were known as Sumptuary Laws (You can read the Wiki article here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law) - which restricted which colours you were able to wear or decorate your home with, due to your rank and social status. As most dyes were made from native plants, the colour palette open to the ordinary person was naturally limited to a soft range of earthy tones, but the more expensive dyes were literally forbidden to them. This wasn’t helped by Henry VIII; you can blame him for quite a lot, not least matricide, but perhaps if he’d reigned in his lustful temper tantrums and we’d stayed Catholic, we might not have gone quote so puritan. Colour was seen as intrinsically Catholic, all that stained glass and gold and purple robes, so bright colour had that lingering association that eventually became not quite ‘us’ and certainly the preserve of ‘them’.

There is an interesting theory that the puritan desire to turn the church from a jewel box of colours into an almost blank, white box, was taken across the sea with the Mayflower and became the aesthetic at the heart of the American Modernist art movement, which saw it’s ultimate expression in ultra minimalism.

Eventually the introduction of industrially made pigments and dyes made colour more accessible, and the Victorian Middle Classes decked themselves and their homes out in a riot of colour which would have made their ancestors blush - but there was still sense that you had to earn the right to wear them, that it wasn’t quite for you down there. Mix in here the strict social rules around mourning, the requirements to wear black for a prescribed number of weeks and months after a death in the family, from full black forever or until you re-married if it was your husband, to grey for three weeks should you only have lost your Half Great Aunt once removed - and colour was thankfully ushered off the scene when the reality of adult life struck. 

In the art scene at the time, what was considered ‘art’ still drew much on the old masters from the Renaissance, which were all now being viewed through the smog, grime and unstable pigments of the preceding centuries, which had rendered a lot of their work suitably murky and brown. The work of Constable and Turner may now look traditional to us, but in their day both men shocked the world by painting not in the colours that had been agreed upon to be correct, but by using the colours as they saw them. Turner’s skies in particular were so remarkable because he was reflecting the effect of the eruption of Krakatoa, which caused weather disruption on an unprecedented scale and turned our sunsets into a riot of colour. 

The shock of the new has always been underlined by its colours, from the red of Revolution to the fluorescent explosions of Hippy Culture, Punk, Rave and Queerness, and let us not forget the racial element to all of this. There is nothing more indicative of the Stars Quo as hearing government ministers damn with faint praise immigrant communities by referring to the ‘colour’ that they bring to our cities, where that word used to define otherness. Other than small incursions into red, white and blue, someone how all those other shades are not quite British, and not quite for ‘us’, the us of colonialism, suburbia and weak tea.

Spending my life as I have understanding this but not caring about it, I still notice the strange rules we draw around the use of colour. If you wear bright colours, which I do, you are always being told that you’re ‘brave’, with a wistful ‘I wish I were brave enough to wear this colours,’ a wonderful piece of negging. I could make a point here that woman in particular are commented on for their reckless adoption of bright shades, when they become scarlet women - but then again, it is still an act of rebellion for most white, cis men to wear pink outside of a wedding - in that this choice often comes with comment.

Choosing to use strong colours in my latest collection was a choice, but one that I did have to think about. Many people buy art to suit a room, nothing wrong with that, but of course choosing a colour as an artist is an easy of way cutting off a large part of your potential market. I imagine the King Charles will be able to redecorate a room in his palace just to accommodate the crimson excess of his latest portrait, but most of us don’t have that luxury. Conversely though, if you have no control over your walls, if you rent or life is just not going to let you redecorate this year, buying colourful art is something you can do to try on a new personality for your space. Start small perhaps, a bright scatter cushion or two on your beige sofa, a throw which reminds you of sunshine in the middle of winter, of the blue and gold of holidays. Venture in to a  bright rug to sink your toes into, a new duvet to match, slowly, slowly give yourself over to the delight and luxury of colour. Remember, if you’re nervous about it that’s ok, but you’re nervous because for centuries you and people like you were told you weren’t allowed colour, that it was somehow linked to moral excess and sexual deviancy, that you had to do as your were told and keep your nose clean. Then go to a hardware shop and buy yourself paint in chartreuse or orange, teal or tangerine - or all four - and claim back colour for yourself. It’s an act of rebellion you deserve.