Earworm by Author

The Value of Color

Art’s Real Worth as a Meta Collectivist Perspective

I have always loved color. With no other perspective than my own, I’ve no idea, for example, how many people in this world would be out-of-their-minds happy to sit down with a Pantone color book for two hours, sipping coffee as sunshine streams through a picture window bouncing light onto each page.

That’s literally where I was a year ago at my cousin’s house in Indiana. Kelly O’Dell Stanley is an artist, as was her father, my uncle. As I remember, she was at church that morning, and so was I.

Whether this particular two-hour communion with color in her dining room led me to pick up my first brush and buy a small watercolor kit after Covid-19 hit, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

What seems to matter is that I’d been telling myself a lie. That I was no good at art. That I could write, that I could play the piano (so-so) and the flute and that long ago I could sing. That was the extent of my artistic capabilities as I understood them. Because that was all I accepted about myself.

But this acceptance was simply an uninformed lie. I’d never tried anything…