Color and Mood: How I Choose a Palette

Ask me what my favorite part of painting is, and I'll tell you without hesitating: the color.

Not the finished piece. Not the first brushstroke. The moment I'm standing in front of my palette, deciding what goes where and why — that's where the magic happens for me.

Where it starts

Some days I walk into the studio already inspired by a color. Maybe it was something I saw in a piece of fabric, a paint chip at the hardware store, or a photo that stopped me mid-scroll. The painting becomes a vehicle for that color — everything else is built around it.

Other days, it's the landscape itself that leads. The light on actual water, the way a field looks at a certain hour, the specific green of a particular tree. On those days, I'm chasing something real.

And then there are the days I set myself a challenge: two or three tubes of paint, that's it. No reaching for the easy answer. Just those colors, mixed every way I can think of, stretched as far as they'll go. It's one of my favorite exercises — constraint has a way of making you more creative, not less.

Blues, greens, and the unexpected

If you look across my work, you'll find a lot of blues and greens. That's home for me — water, sky, trees, the colors I keep coming back to. But I love the moment when something unexpected sneaks in. A bit of orange. A flash of pink where you'd never expect it.

That's actually one of my favorite things to do: swap a color out entirely. In a real landscape, a distant hill might be a soft, muted green. In my painting, it might be pink. Or lavender. Or something I haven't named yet. The reference is real, but the color is mine.

Contrast and harmony

Some paintings call for restraint — a limited palette, colors that sit close together on the wheel, a quiet mood. Others want contrast: hues pulling against each other, tension that makes the eye move. I love both. I reach for both, depending on what the painting is asking for.

That's the thing about color — it isn't just decoration. It's mood. It's feeling. It's the difference between a painting that whispers and one that sings.

I never quite know which one I'm going to make until I start mixing.