Week #4: Prompt; Color
How does the word color work with Pandora’s Box? This week I have no insight nor make any connection between the prompt Color and Pandora’s Box. What keeps coming up are the words Coloring and Coloring Books.
When I was young, sick and had to stay in bed, my mother would buy me a new Coloring Book and a box of crayons. I loved the dot-to-dot pictures. I loved the new crayons with their perfect points. I decided to turn my previous collages into black and white images. I then colored them using colored pencils. My enthusiasm for coloring did not last long. Perhaps it didn’t work back then either. When I was sick, I often fell asleep mid-page.
I decided to look up the word color in the dictionary. I hoped to find a new definition, something I could expand upon. Something to peak my imagination. What caught my interest is the word coloring. When used as a verb … to misrepresent, especially by distortion or exaggeration – to color the facts. … I agree. In the story of Pandora, the subject of distortion and misrepresentation apply … the story colors Pandora and Eve as scapegoats. It’s women’s fault that there is evil in the world. See my last post … First Sinners.
I looked up Color in my symbols dictionary and read what it had to say. “Color as a symbol is the differentiated, the manifest, diversity, and the affirmation of light. Black and White represent negative and positive, and all opposites. God, as light, is the source of color.” As I colored my black and white collages, I note that whatever is “colored” becomes more meaningful, pops-out, turns into a highlight …the red apples, the red heart, the yellow pears, the flowers, the bird and the Box. Pandora’s face, the butterflies, the blue shirt and the torn paper all take on a special focus. So what do I make of this collage? A Poem.
Red apples, yellow pears,
Fruit from the Gods
Flowers briefly announce
Spring, Summer and Fall
Temporary, fragile, juicy heart,
Open faces, dot-to-dot the branch
With bird flutter and orange butterflies
Dancing gold coins tossed before the blue
Torn truth, black and white, splashes raindrops
Down to color the feminine psyche.