Muddy Harmonies of Earthy Colours

Light and sound are the two ways we perceive the creative force of God. We recall the scene of a native forest such as Harmony expressing the vigour and harmony of natural greens and browns, with sprinkles of whites,  yellows, reds, and blues in leaves, flowers, and berries. Across this landscape it is easy to imagine the play the light and shadow giving depth to the image.

Each colour harmonises or is discordant with its neighbours. Plants grow out of the similar genetic lineages and so their colours have much in common, and their chemical processes give them a set range of colours. Plant caretakers such as lementals, bees and other creatures have their colour preferences and plants play to their senses like art upon a canvas. Local minerals give rocks a common colour theme and tint the colours of plants by their excess and deficiency.

A living forest is full of relationships built up over tens of years and millenia in which plants have grown in relationship with each other. One of the joys of visiting an old forest is the entering into a grand old family of matriachs, patriachs, and generations of children relating to each other, talking to each other, and in association with multitudes of species.

So when it comes to building in a forest wood and earth have a harmony with the land that makes them natural choices of building material; and the colours found in these elements blend to make a composite reflecting the play of colours, light and shade, surrounding them in the garden and forest.

The complexity of options in colour charts reflects the many colours found in nature. It requires much contemplation on design and integration of structure (as the different components such as walls and window frames will be different colours) and the actual choice of colours that they will be.

Such was my journey with Danaa. The clays and straw she is built of vary in colour from grey-browns to golden-browns. The gravels that could be used in the mix offered their  intensities from light grey to almost black.  The light grey was chosen for its lighter influence on the warm clay golds.

Macrocarpa timber brings light browns in amazing diversity, considering it is just one type of tree, to which fire was added in a red tinted strain. Within the journey of discovering nature this “red” was later found to have been formerly called “macrocarpa”.  I used in double strength and Danaa has a warmth that hints of cedar.

Some sills are clear varnished macrocapra, others add the darker browns of rimu stained and these are stained with the double “macrocarpa” red.  City clothes, houses, and cars show the results of limited palettes and strict colour codes. In Danaa variations from sill to sill create a play of colours that reflect the interest and intrigue of the variations found in the forest.

It came time to to choose the colour of Danaa’s window frames and doors and I maybe the vigour of yellow would match the vigour of the red. The yellow looked great, yet did not harmonise with the clay earth walls, and certainly not the timber browns and reds.

So contemplation continued in quiet times and I perused colour charts and wandered the building-supply stores hearing about spectrometers to match colours.  Inner nudges bubbling out into my living consciousness as a result of the contemplation guided me to a particular paint store, and I asked if they had a spectrometer. They didn’t and I couldn’t find the sample I had brought of my “macrocarpa” red.  On the inner I saw I was to simply trust the store’s consultant who well knew her way around colours.

She chose a light yellow clay colour. A colour I had considered too muddy to be cheerful. Following my inner trust I bought a whole litre as a full on test and yesterday I painted the first frames.  A warmth was discovered within the colours of the earth that had been missed before. Being a cob-earth building Danaa is essential dried mud wrapped around particles of gravel.

This colour is muddy, and muddy is earthy, a presence of groundedness, a solid natural substantiality that is felt in the thick earth walls that the windows are set into and let light onto.

The intrigue continues and as more painting creates more interplay between the colours, the harmony between wood and warm fire flourishes, and statements of metal, and water will be introduces as a full harmonic of elements, which is Danaa.