Very Peri

I’ve always loved the color periwinkle if only because it’s so much fun to say the name! I was never an “artistic” child, but I reveled in colors, and being able to not only distinguish periwinkle from other blue and purple crayons in the box — and to know its name — always made me feel… well, a bit smug, to be honest. I couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint, did not “do well with scissors”, and failed at any sort of crafts involving glue, but I could pick out periwinkle. I guess for me that was a sort of consolation. Maybe I couldn’t do all those other artistic things my friends did, but I had my keenly accurate sense of color.

I even knew that a periwinkle was a flower, actually a ground cover, and there’s always a bit of debate as to whether periwinkle flowers are blue or purple, One thing I didn’t know as a child, though, was that periwinkle is often called “the flower of death”. According to lore, condemned prisoners wore crowns woven from periwinkle vines as they marched to their death. Periwinkle crowns were also placed on the heads of children who died.

I do still love periwinkle, and I was delighted when Pantone chose “Very Peri” as their “color of the year” for 2022. The following is taken directly from Pantone’s website as their introduction to “Very Peri”:

Displaying a carefree confidence and a daring curiosity that animates our creative spirit, inquisitive and intriguing PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri helps us to embrace this altered landscape of possibilities, opening us up to a new vision as we rewrite our lives. Rekindling gratitude for some of the qualities that blue represents complemented by a new perspective that resonates today, PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri places the future ahead in a new light.

We are living in transformative times. PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri is a symbol of the global zeitgeist of the moment and the transition we are going through. As we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. Digital design helps us to stretch the limits of reality, opening the door to a dynamic virtual world where we can explore and create new color possibilities. With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse and rising artistic community in the digital space PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how color trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.

Throughout the year, I tend to notice Pantone’s “color choice” wherever I look. It was interesting to me, for example, to see how many advertisers made use of “gray and yellow” in their 2021 commercials. As I’ve mentioned before, our new downstairs spa is also decorated in gray and yellow because of the acrylic pourings I made last year using those Pantone color selections. (It was a rare year when Pantone chose not one but two colors for their annual honor.)

Needless to say, I am thrilled by the 2022 color choice, and I’m looking forward to seeing it around me more and more. I’m going to make a point of using the color more and more, as well. I want to paint beautiful periwinkle skies, fill the foregrounds of my landscape paintings with tiny dots of periwinkle ground cover. I want to create vibrant periwinkle shadows and highlights.

Yes, I love periwinkle! How about you?