Yellow has been appearing in my paintings. It started with just a small patch of colour on a blue painting and then started to appear in more, I don’t know exactly why I’m drawn to cadmium yellow. It’s a colour that isn’t found in dark moody places and can make a work sing if next to the right muted shade. It has the power to lift everything around it and make things feel alive.

I don’t own any yellow items of clothing right now but remember first getting excited about this colour when I was about 13 . I remember overhearing an adult say that yellow was going to be everywhere the following year . I thought I’d had this insider information about the fashion industry and liked the idea of being ahead of the curve .

I started to see it creep in ,spotted it a little in magazines , then someone on Tv, probably in London . It’s coming it’s coming , I need to get my hands on some . It seemed so bright and so modern - unlike this grey nowhere town I was living in. I remember waiting for it to filter down from the places of fashion and reach the market stalls where my mum bought my clothes from. I got her to buy the first bright yellow too that came in even though it had a weird fit and and had a kind of jersey stand up collar that felt scratchy . It did nothing for my pale freckly completion but that wasn’t the point. I owned the yellow and it made me feel something , like a connection to something bigger and brighter out there.
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I’ve only recently come back to yellow. Buying this year’s Leuchtturm planner in sunshine yellow brings back those same feelings and using it gives me so much more pleasure than if I’d played safe and bought a safe black , planner .