Paint and Possibility

I crave transformation. Creating new things. Imagining different possibilities. And when I’m feeling stuck or constrained in my writing, or my life, I like to paint.

Not canvases—walls. Ceilings, sometimes, if I’m ambitious.

Taping, rolling, and going around annoying little edges without slopping on the floor, I don’t find enjoyable.

It’s the results I love.

The sense that I’ve caused a shift, altered my space to match my vision. All for a relatively small amount of work, and money.

But here’s my secret. I can get much of this satisfaction without any effort or expense at all.

I just look at paint chips.

I love standing over them in stores, holding them up to the light at the window, and then under the hooded light that is supposed to replicate indoor light at home. I love the gradations displayed three or five chips to a card, seeing the effect of one more drop, then one more drop of colour. How a green might seem to be heading toward Forest, only to wind up Emerald. How something appealing at the palest end of the first chip can, three cards on, morph into something execrable. And I love comparing the relative merits of Wythe over Van Courtland Blue. 

The years I’ve spent honing this obsession has given me an eye that more rightfully belongs to a professional painter or decorator. Often, when I’m visiting an unfamiliar room I know immediately what shade and brand they’re painted in. (“Ah, Benjamin Moore’s Maple Leaf Red.”) And I have a fan’s nostalgia for colours that appeared only briefly before they were discontinued. (R.I.P. Martha Stewart Living Paints. You are missed. Your Eggplant in my office is starting to chip.)

But I realized my paint chip habit had gone beyond pleasure to serious self-care when, in the middle of a particularly stressful meeting, I found myself smiling over gritted teeth and thinking, All you have to do is get through this and then you can go to Farrow & Ball.

I miss paint chips. True, hardwares are often open, even during our strictest lockdowns. But mask or no mask, the man in the orange apron wouldn’t appreciate me sharing his air for any longer than necessary. And how can you put a time limit on investigating what Behr can do with yellow?  I know I could scoop paint chips by the handful (they’re free, after all) and just spread them out on my kitchen table. But the appeal is in the savouring, the comparison, and then the selection. So, yes, I’m adding paint chip appreciation to the list of the last year’s small, but palpable losses. Sometimes I’ve felt it so acutely, I’ve been tempted to purchase a number of fan decks (the sort that professional painters carry), so I can be ready when the craving strikes. Making it one more thing I have the tools to do entirely on my own, like waxing my eyebrows and baking bread three times a week.

But it wouldn’t be the same.

For now, I soothe myself with what can be found online and on social media. I don’t like the effect of comparing colours on a screen, but I’ve found ways to get a virtual fix. Pantone’s Instagram is an entertaining follow. Benjamin Moore’s annual colour trends brochure translates relatively well to a website. And while nothing can replace the lush experience of a trip to a bricks and mortar Farrow&Ball, their online store offers something of the atmosphere. (And there you can appreciate not only the F&B colours, but their unabashedly British-country-weekend names. How does anyone choose between Mizzle, Pigeon and Manor House Grey?)

It isn’t the same as holding a dozen bookmark-sized bits of inspiration in my hand, but it surrounds me with colourful possibilities, for when the world is finally finished its own transformation.