LET COLOUR HELP YOU.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 August 1931, Page 13

LET COLOUR HELP YOU.

THE EVE OF A RENAISSANCE. Of the practical value of colour in our daily life we have as yet only the dimmest conception. The majority of people are content, in a greater or lesser degree as their colour sense has developed or remained latent, merely to “feel” colour. They like it or they dislike it, and there the matter ends. They remain oblivious to the far-reach-ing effect it may be having upon their natures. The aim or the chromatologist is to understand the feelings which colour arouses, and to apply the knowledge for the greater happiness and welfare of mankind.

Scientists have told us that X-Ray and ordinary light are the same thing, only differing in wave-length and vibration. They further tell us that light gives a finer vibration than sound to the extent of a million million times; and, as the basis of colour treatment lies in the fart that one vibrating body will produce similar vibrations in another body that is sufficiently in tune with it, it is comparatively easy to understand why colour can heal and bring peace /to the tired mind, when everything else, music included,- has failed to do so. When the medical man advises a change of air, very often we derive equal benefit from a change of colour in fresh surroundings. There can be no hard and fast rules about colour, for the simple reason that no person responds to ft in the same degree as another. But in all of us, as the great colour expert pointe out, the colour sense is highly susceptible. to education We are no longer suffering, as we have done for many years, from fear of colour and a consequent supression of colour in our daily life. We are beginning to realise, too, that w-e cannot get away from it, and that it is reacting on us either for good or for evil.

For instance, we enter a charming room into which the sun is treaming, and quite possibly the only details we

notice are that the carpet is a deep, satisfying blue, and that the same blue is repeated in a great jar of delphiniums in the far corner. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, we are happy, gay. Again, we stand before a dingy, dra'b front door, which opens on to a small, ill-lit hall, and we wonder what, after all, is there to live for?

Standing beneath a glaring, unshaded electric light or a crude flaring ga jet, who has not suddenly felt conscious of universal ugliness? You glance at your fellow creatures, and then you realise that you .are looking tired, haggard, grey, with every line and wrinkle accentuated. Immediately you lose poise, and feel irritated and depressed for no apparent reason. But in public building®, m well as in homes, all this is changing with amazing rapidity. In the cheery golds and yellow* of sunny shades or in the kindly glow of roee-colour we look our best, we feel our best, and so we radiate happiness and goodwill. Slowly and surely we are freeing ourselves from the ugliness we have tolerated for so long. In time w: shall learn that into every room we can put just the things we want that room to give back to us. Everywhere the Victorian jumble ie giving place to simplicity of line and pure colour beauty. We are realising that light and shade are equally lovely and that space does not need a collection of rubbish to beautify it. We are on the eve of a great-colour renaissance. Colour is being scientific-1 ally used in every conceivable way all around us. If we want colour'to help j us individually all we have to do is to learn to apply it with ' understanding to our daily life. I