Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Living in Colour


When I was building my house I decided that I wanted the house to blend in with the trees and the fields around me, so I asked for a stucco roughly the colour of the cabbages and palms in the fields nearby. After rejecting mint green, sea green, turquoise green, kelly green, forest green, and a dozen other shades, the plasterer finally got the colour right, to his great disgust. "But, madame, this is not a bright colour!", he complained. That's right. It's a grey green that is very easy on the eyes. I love the colour and am happy with it, but the neighbours have decided that this is simply another example of my eccentricity.

Local tastes in house colour are a tad stronger than mine. Sometimes I wonder if the colours are conscious choices or whether someone simply had a sale on a certain shade of paint. I remember a number of years ago when there was a sudden outbreak in lavender painted balconies in certain parts of town. We decided that a huge truckload of lavender paint had been highjacked, but it may have simply become fashionable. Riding through the villages, I notice the house painting fashions change over the years. Just recently it has become popular to paint balconies and houses and then make flower-like prints over the brighter or darker colours of the base.
The interiors of the houses are often equally strongly coloured and bright. I was also scolded for having such subdued tastes as painting my living room a dusty rose rather than a bright yellow or pink. To each his own, I guess. But then I have a collection of prints, photographs and paintings collected over the years that decorate my walls and the village houses are generally more bare of decor. Farmers save their money for schooling for children, new animals, repairs to machinery or buildings or such. Paintings are less practical.

While I choose to live in subdued tones, I really enjoy seeing the bright patterns that people paint on the balconies and walls. Cities are far too much grey cement and red brick in my mind and the colours brighten spirits as well as they brighten the view. Sometimes they are geometric patterns and some of the paint jobs provide optical illusions of texture and space.

I'm sure that in many of our more regulated communities, the local authorities would be having fits at some of these paint jobs. But that is one of the wonderful advantages of a fairly uncontrolled building code.





copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

12 comments:

Connie said...

I don't think I could live in a brightly colored home, unless I could change the bright colors on a regular basis! I would get terribly tired of a bright pink after a few months. But driving by and enjoying the colors a little bit at a time... I like that. The randomly bright colored balconies and houses in Cairo reminded me of living in Florida .. not in any place with a home owners' assoc.(!), but the old neighborhoods where people do as they please!

Candice said...

I love all the colours! I wouldn't have it too colourful inside, but I think I would love to have a very colourful exterior.

sonofthemummy said...

Wow. Some Egyptians have the architectural concept of whimsy down to a fine art, as they did in ancient times. The color therapy is great and very spiritual. The bold use of primary and secondary colors and eccentric but tasteful lines seems to me to have some of that "heaven on earth" that Trismegistos talked about. This approach stimulates the Harry Potter part of the brain, no doubt.

Star said...

Bright yummy colors, but I think I'd get tired of them quickly, too. Finally, however, you've added another crucial "here's why" to the "why?" list: no paintings. Thanks!

Don Cox said...

One reason for some of the very strong colours may be that they look pretty in the small sample squares. Most paint dealers have cards with small squares showing the available colours.

(I don't know if this is the case in Egypt.)

PipeTobacco said...

Maryanne:

Wow! Thank you for the beautiful images! I too, think it is fun to have such brightly colored buildings around to look at. For me, personally, I *think* I could delve into painting the OUTSIDE of my home an exotic blend of bright colors if I lived in Egypt, but I think I would NOT want anything but gentle, subdued colors on the interior.

PipeTobacco
http://frumpyprofessor.blogspot.com

fialka012 said...

Krásné...

Sharon said...

when we were there the colors/decoration reminded me of parts of the American southwest - and I love the patterns. But I know what you mean about subdued color. I am inclined that way, too, but I wish I could go bold. It seems so liberating.

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