Spectrum of India: The country and its colors.

“I am as curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.”

— Henri Matisse

All I needed was a quote about color.

Doesn’t sound too ambitious, does it? It’s a usual routine for me as I put together each blog here…sometimes I’ll have a quote in mind from something I’ve read, but other times it’s a matter of googling around until I find something that fits.

Then I decide to do a photo-essay blog on the colors of India, on the tremendous spectrum of reds and greens and blues that seems to follow me no matter where I am in the country. And that’s when–while searching through a website called Sensational Color and their list of quotes on color–I stumbled upon the above Matisse quote.

“I am as curious about color as one would be visiting a new country…”

Now this comparison alone would be striking enough for an artistic traveler, but what really made me go, “Seriously, Matisse? Seriously?” was the second half of the quote:

“Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.”

Because, like any good little blogger might do, I’d already chosen the photographs I wanted to use in this post. I’d selected the shots representing each main slot in the color wheel, and then chosen a final picture of a rangoli I saw in Chennai, a kind of traditional folk art decoration, also known as kolam in Tamil Nadu. The intricate symmetrical design with its many bright colors seemed the perfect image to tie all the others together.

And guess where this rangoli’s from.

Yep…at the gates of the Mylapore temple.

As if Matisse could get any cooler, he suddenly gave me a whole new way of looking at color in India–and was tying this post together in a way I certainly hadn’t intended to. And he also got me thinking about that little “as,” the one comparing having a curiosity about color with a curiosity about the world. Need the two be separate endeavors?

If there’s anything I’ve learned in India so far, it’s that a country is its colors, and that by steeping oneself in a new place, you are inevitably learning the tones that bring it to life, forever burning them into your memory:

The rich red doors of Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Papayas popping with color in Hyderabad’s Lad Bazar.

The French Consulate’s mustard walls in Pondicherry.

Glistening fields of rice paddies aglow in Assam.

Blue saree weavings stretched out in rural Tamil Nadu.

Deep-shaded eggplants for sale in a Kathmandu market.