Are you curious about color?
I am! that is why I wrote a book about it
This substack is named after my book “Color Curious” (Chronicle Books, 2025). The book, in a nutshell, is a creative's guide to color: how to observe it in your surroundings, combine it into unique palettes, and apply it fearlessly in art, craft, and design.
That is in a nutshell….now, if you don’t mind, let me get into more detail about how it came to happen.
I started working on the book in 2020, way before I even thought it would become a book. I began, as most good things in an artist’s life, as a passion project: I love color, I love gardening and that year, as everyone in the world, I was stuck at home. So I started, gathering colorful bits from my garden -the various geraniums were the first ones- and photographing them in groupings by color or in combination. What started as something to do that Spring in lockdown quickly became a transformative main thing. Every few days, for 5 seasons (I did 2 Springs because Spring is glorious) I would scout my yard and pick whatever was growing, blooming, fruiting, or drying and decaying for my photos. Even before cutting any leaves or flowers, my eyes would be laser focused on finding the combinations out there! 15 months of this practice trained my eye for color more than the previous 30 years of creative work. It was mind-blowing to realize all the color inspiration I found within the fence of my yard and no, I do not live in a botanical garden, my yard is .75 acre, sometimes it is shaggy and wild and sometimes it looks beautiful and picture-perfect because there is no hired gardener. I am the gardener, it is my hobby and my gym, and how it looks depends on how busy I am in the studio and whether I can dedicate a lot of time to gardening.
Anyhow, 15 months after the first photo, with thousands of images in my archive, the next step was to select my favorites. It was hard, but I narrowed it down to 300 images, and for each one, I created a matching color palette. These palettes, made with watercolor, gouache, ink, and pastel, became an abstracted version of the botanicals. A synthesis of the colors that I became intrigued by.
The Color/Flora series was all about natural color, from the lightest to the darkest, the palest and the brightest. For a while, I thought the natural color would be enough to inspire me and, as I started thinking of putting this in a book, other artists. But eventually, I moved indoors and started color harvesting my home. I searched for things, trinkets, toys, textiles and tchotchkes in drawers and closets and I moved on to photograph and create palettes as I explored human-made color.
Between the two series -the natural and the human-made color- I now had enough images to cover all the color ideas I wanted to share.
With all these images, “Color Curious” could have been just an eye-candy coffee table book, but it is not. The book is full of content, information, inspiration and ideas; the images and palettes, while rich enough to stand alone, became a way for me to illustrate these ideas and provide an endless color inspiration resource for anyone using the book. Inspiring people -artists and non-artists alike- to be more confident with their colors became my mission.
This playful and highly visual book invites you to refresh your relationship to color by observing the world around you.
In each chapter, you will take a deep dive into a different color idea—from working with monochromes to using "pop of color", observing chromatic whites and blacks and understanding how color can evoke time and a sense of place—and will help you find inspiration in art history, travel, household objects, and anywhere around you.
Following the theme of each chapter, I share project ideas to put these color ideas into practice via a wide variety of media and applications, from painting a still life to making a gallery wall in your home or a clothing collection.
While I share a lot of my own ideas and points of view about color, the book also contains the best lessons I learnt from my many art teachers along with a interviews with artists, industry experts and some of my favorite artists’ quotes. My goal is to provide vibrant visual examples, and insightful guidance that feels like an accessible master class in becoming color curious and creating the consistent and rewarding habit of observing, analyzing, and creating with color.
I am very proud of this book, I truly believe anyone will enjoy its pages and will benefit from its texts. It is perfect for art students seeking to establish their personal voice, creative types hoping to integrate more color into their lives, and professional artists eager for a new perspective and a deeper knowledge about color.
So, you want the book right?
The book is now available for preorder anywhere you buy your books and will begin shipping in September (ahem…perfect for holiday gifts):
Here are the links to all the places where you can preorder: Chronicle Books, Rizzoli, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes&Noble, and Target
But wait…
Preorder the book during the Summer and you will be invited to a live online color class and Q&A with me on September 19th.
All you have to do email me to colorcuriousbook@gmail.com a copy of your receipt showing that you preordered “Color Curious” before August 30th and I will send you the zoom link for the class. Along with your receipt, you can also send any questions you may have about color.
So go! order the book for you and for a friend! they will also be invited to the class! 😜
Thank you for reading this and supporting my creative work!
have a colorful day, ❤️🌈
