When I told a friend that I was going to write a blog, she said: "Carly, start with the nature walk." I had forgotten that I had shared it with her, but apparently she still knows.

We all have these important lessons in life, moments that stick with us. I had one at a very young age, I think it was in pre-school or Kindergarten. We were walking outside on a nature walk, and the teacher asked the simple question: "what is the color of grass?" We all knew that. Grass is green, we screamed, happy to know they answer and eager to share this knowledge "Yes, that is right, but look a little bit closer….do you see any other color in the green grass? Is it all green?" We became silent. Suddenly we had to focus and zoom in on the grass. There was dark and light green, lines created by the fresh mowing of the grass. There were some spots of brown, yellow, orange too. This teacher, she so deserves that I at least would remember her name, would continue asking us these kind of questions. Probably not all on the same walk. I just remember these questions: Which one is darker? The grass or the tree? She was the first one practicing critical looking and she taught me to look.

As a mother myself, I remember when I was walking with my son in the city asking him about the shape of things. How many rectangles do you see in/on that house? It sounds silly. The answer doesn’t really matter…. it’s not about counting windows. It is about learning to see. I’m sure I also did these with my girls, but for some reason I specifically remember only the strolls with my son. I have no idea if he remembers what we discussed. Guess who is now on my list? Yep, my granddaughters will get these kind of questions as well. Nora already says that Oma (that is me, Dutch for granny) always says: “Look, Nora”. She and I are walking or biking around the neighborhood and are at the moment very much into trying to find numbers. They are “hidden” on the mailboxes and always a surprise;) And then we read them out loud.

Years later, in my very first law class at the University of Leiden, professor F (I remember his name, but I am not exactly sure how to spell it, so I will leave it out) asked what something was pointing to his wooden desk. That was his table, easy question. He took one leg of the table, tilting its shape. What is this object? Clearly table was defined as something you can sit at, work at or eat on. Its function determined its name. Now what could you do with this “broken" table? If you had never seen the whole table, would you still call it a table, was it broken indeed? To make it even more clear to us, he hung his object of discussion on a hook on the wall. That wasn’t easy to accomplish, but he got it done. Now it was far from a table… My professor had become some kind of Dali, putting a weird object on a wall. The 3 remaining legs pointing dangerously to the class. What was he trying to teach us? Law became about creative thinking and being critical to the obvious. I didn’t realize that at that moment, but he had me hooked just as much as that piece of wood.

These 2 people formed my thinking about color and design. Perspective….the way we see things. The environment is important, the total is important, detail is important, timing is important your personal perception is important….Change one element and the whole can change. That makes color so fascinating. 

 Learning, growing, questioning are all related. You can learn to see things when you are getting exposed to new questions. So if someone asks me, which color the background “should” be for a quilt, I usually am returning this question with another one: do you need a contrast? What would you like to stand out? I will not start a discussion about the color wheel and other color theories. Instead, I want this person to learn how she can tackle such a problem. We start a conversation about it and suddenly instead of 1 option, there are many ways to make it look great. It doesn’t have to be cream, it can be. It doesn’t have to be a solid, it can be a solid. Having options, choices, being flexible makes life much more pleasant than rigid thinking, at least to me. I’m trying to give her confidence, teaching her to believe and trust her instincts. The color wheel will agree.