Remember white walls? I do, just as I recall when antique white with its blush of pink was the only nod toward pigment we could muster. All our walls then were shades of white, like art galleries in New York poised for Picasso or museums in Santa Fe with santos in mind. I loved antique white, still do, but I also remember my first flash of color.

It was the kids’ room upstairs where the bunk bed and the school art ruled. I went downtown to the paint company that advertised they would “cover the world.” I wanted to cover one wall and the color I wanted was no less lofty than sky. Not “sky blue,” I wanted to exactly match the sky. I give it to the unsuspecting paint guy that he was patient with me. Selling paint, like selling shoes, must take a saint-like reserve. As I held paint chip after paint chip up to the sky outside, he waited for my decision. He didn’t mention that the sky was changing, that artists move to New Mexico from ports as distant as Seattle to try and capture this same sky and its attendant light. No, he waited. Nobody messes with a woman on a mission. I got my blue. It’s still there, now that the room is my cluttered office and I’m a grandmother. Does it match the sky? Maybe at 4 o’clock in summer before a storm, but what it did match was my need for blue.

The plunge into color is a commitment. It’s not as serious as deciding to marry or have a child, but it does align you with the color chart. Hot or cool, saturated or dilute, my cravings for color change over the years. You notice it first with clothing. For years I wore purple, then that wannabe-O’Keeffe black and white phase, and now I crave green though my skin is already headed in that direction. The most satisfying way to paint comes from an inner calling. What makes your mouth water and is a visual turn-on? What colors are the visual equivalent to bittersweet chocolate? Cruise the ’hoods from Taos to Todos Santos. Don’t be afraid of scoffers. Follow your color bliss.

I was dragged into bliss in 1971, long before I ever heard the name Frida Kahlo, when some students drove me from the anthropology museum to her house near Mexico City, where I was visiting my Aunt Pearl. (Pearl married Uncle Morris, a Mexican man who lived to 100 and said “Absowutely!” so wonderfully I could listen to it all day.) I was dressed in Hari Krishna orange and my Hungarian eyebrows reminded the university students of Frida, also half-Hungarian. The colors I saw in her house got under my skin and into my psyche. Maybe you saw the recent movie of her life and know of what I speak. Now, she was a vivid woman. Someday, maybe, I’d be colorful.

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