If you have ever visited the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in April, then you have experienced the incredibly luminous green that pervades the area at this time of year. I have decided to create some new colors based on the four seasons of Mariposa County where I escape to often. Mariposa Spring will be the first of this series. The color is actually the combination of the light both reflecting through and off of the grass and leaves. Luminosity is the key word and the full spectrum pigmentation of all of my colors helps preserve and recreate this luminosity on your walls. These colors are a full sensory experience. You can feel the color as much as see it. Spring has sprung in Mariposa and it is a glorious celebration of color and fresh hope. Enjoy!

I can think of no better words to describe our in-store event with David Bromstad yesterday…pure joy! From the intimate meeting with designers in the morning, to the larger group of customers, painters, and fans in the afternoon, David charmed and wowed the crowd with his personality, design savvy,  and wicked sense of humor. Pictured above are a few of my staff and myself rollicking in the afterglow of this fun time. David painted a picture while the crowd asked questions, and one lucky winner went home with a Bromstad original! The funny thing was the winner had earlier talked about a problem coordinating with a yellow sofa that she had purchased. Without even knowing it David painted her the perfect solution. It was a pure joy to host someone so gracious and generous of spirit. I found myself grinning the whole time and I know everyone left the store more enlivened and inspired than when they arrived.

David talked about the new episodes of Color Splash Miami, which begin airing on HGTV in July. A new crew, a new city, and bigger budgets. San Francisco was home to the first 3 seasons of Color Splash, and many of the people in attendance expressed regret that he has moved on. I wish David good luck on all his upcoming endeavors, and look forward to seeing the new series.

Thanks also to Rocky Prior and Mary Zachman of Mythic Paint who made all of this possible. What a great company to be doing business with. These folks mirror my values of integrity, community and entrepreneurial spirit. Great job!

If we imagine a musical instrument playing the note of middle C over and over and over again, it won’t be long before it literally becomes monotonous and irritating to our ears. In much the same way if we construct a paint color using only one chromatic pigment, say bright yellow, it may be perfectly pleasing at first, but eventually it won’t be soothing to the eye.

By adding another note, this time E, we construct a musical dyad. While this may be more interesting than the single note, it is still  incomplete. Similarly a paint color constructed with two pigments, this time we’ll add blue, is more enticing than one made from only one pigment, but still feels incomplete. There is something oddly missing from the equation.

When we add a third note we have created a basic chord. This has a resonance that is very comfortable to our ears. Likewise when we add a third pigment, this time red, we have joined the primary colors together in a combination that creates a more pleasing color. This is the basic concept inherent in full spectrum color mixing. So we can’t have what I term, “musical colors” unless we have a minimum of three chromatic pigments, but why stop there? We can go on combining complementary pigments until we create highly luminous colors that seduce our eyes and connect with us on a deeply emotional level.

One more thing to consider in our musical analogy is timbre, know in psycho acoustics as sound quality or sound “color”. It is worth noting that just as different musical instruments create differing sounds when playing the same note, different paint sheens give differing renditions of the same pigment structures. For example high gloss paint, which reflects light in one direction, can be compared to a piccolo with it’s unmistakable yet limited sound.  Eggshell paint is much more versatile and can be considered the middle range of a piano, scattering light in a wider range.  Flat paint which reflects light in all directions gives us the most robust rendering of any pigment combination, similar to a cello. It is considered the most elegant of sheens and is often inappropriately specified as a result. Practically speaking kitchens and bathrooms are not a place for flat paint. So let’s not forget sheen is an extremely important part of our color selection.

Next up…metamerism!

David Bromstad creates a Color Splash at G&R Paint

I am pleased to announce that David Bromstad, host of HGTV’s Color Splash, will make a personal appearance at G&R Paint Company on Saturday afternoon April 3^rd.  David will host two intimate one hour sessions attended by 25 people in each session.

Hopeful guests need to come in to G&R Paint Company between now and March 27^th to register for a chance for you and a friend to be one of the  lucky attendees. You may also register online at www.philipsperfectcolors.com/DavidBrom/ .

All winners will be notified by Monday March 29^th. If you come into G&R Paint to register you will receive a 10% discount on all Mythic Paint products purchased between now and the time of David’s appearance.

David will talk about why he advocates the use of Mythic Paint, color trends, and design ideas. When you sign up tell us what your interest is and why you would like to meet David. Do you have a painting project that you need help with? David may be able to personally help you during this meet and greet, time allowing.

Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to meet one of the most dynamic faces of color. It is sure to be a memorable afternoon.

I am delighted to have been featured in this Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. The Home and Garden section has been running a column for the last several months featuring designers and others that are having an impact on design in the Bay Area. Anh-Minh Le was kind enough to interview me and the results plus my own favorites and cheat sheet tips are featured on SFGate.com. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/12/HOFJ1BRUDP.DTL&type=homeandgarden.

I am very pleased to announce that the color Botticelli AHCD #39, from the Ann Hall Color Design Collection, is featured in the March 2010 edition of House Beautiful. Kudos to Kendall Wilkinson for calling out one of Ann Hall’s great colors. I have long been enamoured with Ann’s blues which are some of the softest and loveliest I have ever seen. It is only fitting that one of these great colors would be featured in an edition entitled, “All About Blue”. While blue is a perennial favorite, it can also come off as icy or “baby boy blue” if we’re not careful. The full spectrum nature of AHCD #39, along with all the other Ann Hall colors, helps to soften these unwanted tendencies. To put it in Kendall Wilkinson’s words, “It’s like a chameleon….” Go to www.annhallcolordesign.com to see more of Ann’s amazing colors. Check out Kendall’s store at 3419 Sacramento Street in San Francisco, or visit her website at www.kendallwilkinsondesign.com.

I was mixing one of my colors yesterday, PPC-DT8 Hazelnut and was struck by the sheer beauty of the pigments suspended in the paint before shaking. So what we have here is a clear illustration of before and after mixing of a highly complex full spectrum brown. The yellows, reds, blues, violets, etc. intermingle to make up one delicious color. This stuff looks good enough to eat when mixed. It reminds me of Nutella. Enjoy!

Let’s talk a bit about color theory. When we speak of color theory it is important to remember that we are talking about a theory. Color theories have been evolving since antiquity and will continue on until the end of time. In fact if we go back to the time of Aristotle we see that he believed in a color scale that ranged from black to white with all of the other colors falling somewhere in between. Plato believed that mere mortals couldn’t understand the mysteries of colors at all, this was God’s territory alone.

It is not until we reach the period of the Renaissance that the modern day color wheel, like the one above, began to emerge. Sir Isaac Newton in his Treatise on Opticks was the first to begin speaking about color in this circular fashion. So all theories have a life span of sorts and are only held sacred until something else comes along to disprove them. I make this point only to try to get us to think outside of the accepted norm.

Did you know that Van Gogh studied piano in order to improve his painting technique? Kandinsky, an early twentieth century abstract painter was a syn-aesthete, a person who experiences a stimulus in more than one sense. He believed that he could hear color! Van Gogh’s teacher through him out of the class because he thought he was crazy, and you might think I am a little bit too, but follow me if you will on a little musical journey.

Have you ever seen a quiet color? Have you ever heard a color sing? Even though these statements don’t make logical sense you probably have some idea what I am talking about. So how are music and color connected? Quite simply a quiet color or one that sings is a color that is balanced and harmonious much like a finely crafted piece of music. Stay tuned.

I recently came across information about the 3/50 project and was immediately supportive. Cinda Baxter started a campaign last year to literally save the bricks and mortar of American small business. G&R Paint Company is literally made from bricks and mortar! I encourage everyone to check out the website http://www.the350project.net, and to support your local businesses. These are the businesses that make our individual communities unique. Without these businesses America would just be one long strip mall. Please take the time to find out more about this wonderful project. Times are tough right now for all businesses, so every purchase counts.

A philosopher I once read asked the question, “Do we actually see anything at all?” What he meant by this question was are we capable of seeing anything objectively, or is all of our seeing influenced or colored in some way by our history, culture, or other subconscious biases? So I ask the question, “Do we see color objectively, or is all of our color seeing influenced by our history, culture or other subconscious biases? I’ll ask another question. Did you wake up this morning and decide today what colors you like and which ones you don’t? Did you do this yesterday and are you planning on doing it again tomorrow.  Most likely the answer is no. So where does our color preference come from?

We have what I like to call a collective cultural color consciousness. I know it’s a mouthful. The psychologist Carl Jung wrote extensively on the subject of our collective unconscious. Is it not reasonable to conjecture that much of our color preferences have been filtered down to our subconscious minds through historically preserved works of art and ultimately by the very nature that surrounds us?

So if we look at the art that has most heavily influenced this color consciousness in Western Civilization we will come to the period commonly referred to as The Renaissance. Artists such as Michelangelo, DaVinci, Bellini, and others helped to inform our color consciousness by their master works created using the natural pigments available to them at the time. Their works have been enshrined in cathedrals and museums throughout the western world. Western religion played an important role by embedding the palette of these masters into our consciousness as early as childhood, since they were often the patrons of these artists.

You see what we have here is a color trend that has lasted more than 500 years! Now that is one worth paying attention to.