The quiet power of colour

Amanda Ketterer
Apr 25
2 min read

Colour has always been the starting point for me. It drives the whole mood in my work—sometimes before I even realise what I’m trying to say. It’s funny how a certain shade can hold a whole feeling or moment inside it.

There’s a podcast I love from Farrow & Ball called The Chromologist (imagine being called a Chromologist!). They chat to people who are obsessed with colour and how it ties into memories from their lives—like a particular green that takes them straight back to their childhood kitchen, or a pink that reminds them of a favourite jumper they wore non-stop in the 90s. I find that stuff so fascinating, because it’s exactly how I relate to colour too.

These conversations stayed with me because that’s exactly how colour works in my own life—and in my art. When I paint, I’m not just thinking about what looks good together. I’m reaching for the feeling behind the colour. The warmth of a dusty pink, the calm of a smoky blue, the bittersweet pull of a soft, vintage green. I’m always trying to express what a moment felt like, not just what it looked like.

Sometimes, it's the way light falls across a room in the late afternoon or the strange joy of a colour that clashes just slightly with the rest of the palette that pulls me in. These are the things I try to put on the canvas. I’m always collecting colours—screenshots from Pinterest interiors, old fabric swatches, a memory of a room I once loved—because they speak to me in ways words can’t. They ground me when I’m not sure where a painting’s going.

I think that’s the magic of colour—it slips past your brain and lands somewhere deeper. We don’t always realise why something feels right, but we know it does. For me, that’s what I’m always aiming for in the studio. To create something that feels like a memory, or a moment you can’t quite place—but it feels like home all the same.

Here are some colour combinations I have been playing with before I start my next collection