A colour series #2 red
Paint the town red
See red
Raise a red flag
Red in the face
Red mist
Red-handed
Red herring
Red-letter day
Red. Hot, masculine, proud, ceremonial, lucky for some. The colour of a hundred English idioms peppering conversations, mostly in warning. We paint the town red on a Friday night, become red in the face or feel the red mist descending. We get tangled in red tape (particularly in bureaucratic Italy) and try to avoid getting caught red-handed.
Red is danger signs and cheap sex under red lights, iron-rich blood and searing pain. The heat of passion and the heat of hell are coloured carmine: simultaneously our rapture and our ultimate downfall. When Cy Twombly scratched ‘wilder shores of love’ into his canvas, it was the pure crimson of the blood pulsing through the veins of those four women seeking adventure and romance in exotic faraway lands.
True love is said to be red, indulge in the Romantic poets for a moment or look around you on St. Valentine’s day to see a world saturated with motifs of red roses, although speaking with the hardened heart of a seasoned florist, I would argue the toss. I have wrapped too many red roses for too many begrudging men waving their credit cards despairingly in my face, before hurriedly locking the shop door at close of day blasting ‘No More “I Love You’s”’ from the sound system, hoping that some of those men would hear it, and take heed. As Annie Lennox so eloquently sang, “The language is leaving me in silence…Everyone was being really crazy, the monsters are crazy, there are monsters outside…Do-be-do-be-do-do-do (oh)”. Advice to lovers considering red roses on Valentine’s Day: Don’t. Trust me.
Red for me is no more the colour of love than black is the colour of despair, those emotions being far too rich and profoundly ineffable to encompass just one part of the spectrum. Surely love is every single shade of the human experience, relentlessly saturating an individual’s world from dawn to dusk with the roaming colour of an esoteric sun.
The rawness of red can be difficult, uncomfortable even, not a colour to rest the eye or soothe the soul. It is the colour of insides pulled out, the feeling of impossible riches just out of reach or the flash of a rising temper, the patriarchal nature of a Cardinal’s robes, or a disappointing glut of errors marked on an exam paper. Conversely, red becomes its jolliest and most convivial self when we associate it with the capitalist version of our festive season: Red-breasted robins, Father Christmas, holly berries and poinsettias, Rudolph’s shining nose. From the plant symbols of the ancient Celts, to Jesus Christ and the medieval roods, to… Coca Cola.
Red, a colour of ambiguity then. Do you embrace it? Would you wear Valentino red for a night out (yes!), buy a racy red sports car, or drape your windows in opulent red velvets? Red is likely my least favourite colour but subconsciously it is embedded in my psyche as power and strength, and I am always reminded of its rebellious nature when red flowers take their place in my studio. They are stubbornly difficult to work with, naturally outshining most of the other blooms in the bucket with their luminescence and ardour. If red flowers were people, they would be interested only in themselves. The emotionally detached egocentrics of the flower world, best on their own, and admired en masse. Well, that brings us right back to those dozens of red roses, insouciant to the last. Maybe that’s why we have a whole day dedicated to them after all, the red roses would have it no other way.
Images collated from numerous online sources
