BFA Senior Morgan Shreenan Creates Project Focused on the Meaning of Color

“A color's meaning is fluid. Changing from country to country, person to person and even shifting in the eyes of an individual throughout their lifetime. With one set of eyes, one mind,and one life, our concepts of color are completely unique, informed by our individual experiences,” said BFA Senior Morgan Shreenan.

As an artistically minded person, Shreenan felt particularly inspired by the Color Factory Interactive Museum in New York City while visiting last summer. This museum uses colors to tell stories and help the visitors learn something new about themselves. However, Shreenan wanted to push this color theory a bit further than the typical “red equates to anger” and “yellow means excited” ideas, as these equations aren’t accepted by everyone. “Every color has a story, and the more we consider what colors we link to our emotions and our memories, the more we can use color to tell our own stories and learn more about others,” Shreenan said. “Rather than walking in another’s shoes, we can see through their eyes for the first time.” For her final BFA project, Morgan Shreenan interviewed 60 people within her inner-social circle and presented them with a chart of 197 Pantone colors. She asked the individual to identify a color that best represented each emotion: one for sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, excitement, joy and love. The individual’s choice was based on their personal experience and understanding of that color. Some people offered explanations from their memories, and others offered explanations related to their senses. The aesthetically pleasing graph is now displayed on her website, idiochromatic.com. Originally, she planned to create a graph to display in the Harris Fine Arts Center as many BFA graduates do, but she quickly decided that an internet platform was best to share her findings due to campus closures. Having it online now allows her project to continue to grow, especially since people can now participate electronically and read individual’s stories. “I have loved talking to people about the memories and feelings they associate with color, and I hope this is only the beginning,”

Shreenan remarked. “I have included a survey on my website where people can submit their answers, similar to the ones I have displayed. My hope is that this project can grow, and I can continue sharing the color stories through Instagram and my website.” What is truly striking about Shreenan’s project is how the individual color responses are vastly different from the last, yet they all share that universal feeling. In the “sadness” column of her project, the color responses range from brown to blue to orange to white, each unique, each different. Yet, overall, the column displays that feeling of “sadness,” even though each individual’s experience or response was unique. Shreenan hopes that her project adds to the conversation about understanding where another person comes from or what they know, the more we can grow a love and respect for others. “Each of us have a different background, hidden triumphs and tragedies that no one knows about at first glance. I truly believe that every person has an important story to tell, and I just want to help others tell their stories,” Shreenan said.