Addicted to Color

I took this photo series yesterday afternoon while feeding my color addiction at the Central Market in Tahiti.

I discovered I had a color ‘problem’ while living in New York City.

I would frequent ‘color joints’ such as Olive and Bettes or Bergdorf Goodman’s 5F to feed my addiction with purchases of dresses and cashmere sweaters  in hues across the spectrum.

I knew the ‘problem’ had gotten out of hand when I was walking through Soho shortly after returning from the Atlantic leg of my sailing journey and a dedicated Olive and Bettes’ sales clerk actually ran out of the store to greet me on the street and welcome me home.

My dog and (fair weather) best friend, Nelson, who adopted and moved in with the Goldman’s when I left to sail the Atlantic, didn’t remember me when I returned from eight months at sea (or he may have just been angry that I didn’t take him along).

But they remembered me at Olive and Bettes.  I drowned in a sea of beautiful colors that day .

But I had dream, and if I wanted to have the funding to live it, I needed to find alternatives to feed my color addiction.   And of course, there is no place to store all those dresses and cashmere sweaters on a sailboat unless you eliminate spares and provisions (suggestion vetoed by the Captain).

I started with coloring books (no lie).  I was surprised to find that the simple act of adding color to really cool images greatly reduced my need to visit the color joints.  Frequent museum visits and hanging out with really great artists also helped.

But it is really my recent love for Street Art and photography that seem to have done the trick.

Now when I go to town, I am much more apt to pull out my camera than my wallet.

Of course, now I want to buy a new camera.

Maybe I need to go back to coloring books.