The Meaning of the Colour Green
Introduction
Green is one of the three base colours of the additive colour model RGB, where the various combinations of the base colours reproduce a wide array of different colours. On the visible spectrum, green is between cyan and yellow. By far the most common source of green in the world is chlorophyll, the chemical by which plants photosynthesise sunlight into chemical energy. The abundant green foliage of the world has led to a large number of animals and insects adopting green as a colour of camouflage. Green is also found in several minerals, most notably the emerald.
The English word ‘green’ can trace its history back to the Proto-Indo-European “ghre” meaning “to grow”, and like most Germanic languages version of green is a root-cognate with grass. The Romance languages get their variation of green from the Latin viridis, related to virere “to grow” and ver meaning “spring”. These terms have been determined to have been coined independently over millennia, and there is no single root word for green, but in Europe, the colour has been derived from words relating to grass, sprouting vegetation and the season of spring. In some languages, however, green and blue are the same colour, like in old Chinese, Thai, old Japanese and Vietnamese, the same word can refer to either colour. This will be discussed further in a post about the colour cyan.
Green eyes, despite their name, actually have no green pigment; just like blue eyes, it’s an optical illusion caused by a combination of amber or light brown pigmentation mixed with a blue tone imparted by the deflection of reflected light through what’s called Rayleigh scattering. A person is born with one of two eye hues: dark or blue. As they grow older, cells called melanocytes start to discharge melanin, the dark hue in the iris. The iris varies from light brown to black, depending on the concentration of melanin. The melanin content of the iris stroma, as well as the cellular density of the stroma, determines how light is scattered and what colour is perceived. This is an example of a structural colour, which depends on the lighting conditions, especially for lighter-colored eyes. According to some studies of Icelandic and Dutch adults, green eyes are much more common in women than in men. While the illusion of green hides in our eyes and the colour surrounds us in nature, green has been with us throughout our history.
While Neolithic cave paintings do not have any traces of green pigments, unlike black and white, which are both found as early pigments. There have been findings of Neolithic people in northern Europe making a green dye for clothing using the leaves from the birch tree. However, the green colour produced was more akin to a brown and of very poor quality. Ceramics from ancient Mesopotamia show people wearing vivid green costumes, but it’s still unclear to this day if they wore green and, if so, how the colours were produced.
The ancient Egyptians would use many different ways to get green pigment and use it for different things. They would grind the mineral malachite and use it to paint on the walls of tombs or on papyrus. To dye their fabrics green, they would first colour them yellow by using saffron and then soak them in a blue dye made from the roots of the woad plant. To the Egyptians, green was an important colour with very positive associations.
In Culture
For the ancient Egyptians, there was a clear connection between green and vegetation, vigour and growth. Osiris, the ruler of the underworld, was typically portrayed with a green face. Green was a symbol of good health and rebirth. This is contradictory to how modern English would view someone with a face “looking green”, which to us invokes a feeling of repulsion or illness. To the Egyptians, green also symbolised the sea, which was called the “Very Green”. Similarly, the ancient Greeks often didn’t distinguish between green and blue, and the same word would sometimes describe the colour of the sea or the colour of trees.
Green wasn’t counted among the four classic colours of Greek painting - red, black, white and yellow, and thus is rarely found in ancient Greek art. The Romans, however, were more affectionate towards the colour and it was a big part of paintings, mosaics and glass, and by the second century AD the there were 10 different words in Latin for different hues and varieties of the colour. It was associated with Venus, the goddess of gardens, vegetables and vineyards. Also, with Bacchus, the god of wine, and his association with the green ivy leaves. Green was the colour of prosperity and growth, and so in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it would come to be associated with the upper classes of society.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe, the colour of your clothing was a symbol of your class. Red could only be worn by nobility, brown and grey were reserved for the peasants, and green was for merchants, bakers, the gentry and their families. This is common in portraits around the era, most notably of Mona Lisa wearing a green garb, showing that she was from the gentry, not nobility. These natural pigments derived from plants and minerals would eventually be rapidly replaced during the 18th and 19th centuries by synthetic green pigments and dyes. These new dyes were more stable and of higher quality, and some contained dangerous levels of arsenic, which would eventually be removed. This new pigment of green would come to be adopted by the romantic movement of the same era.
Green was viewed as the most restful of colours, and painters like John Constable and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot depicted lush green rural landscapes and forests. Green became the ideal and romanticised antithesis to the ongoing Industrial Revolution and its smoky greys and black smog. This view of the colour as a symbol for nature still lives on in its political association with the environmental movements today, and it continues to be a symbol for spring, growth and the well-being of both planet and its people. Other than our own planet, green is associated with Paradise in Islam, and is abundant in almost all Islamic flags and also the national flags of most Arab nations. Another common symbolic interpretation of green is of youth and inexperience.
Connected to spring and its freshness, green is also associated with anyone young or inexperienced. Like immature or unripe fruit. Terms like ‘green cheese’, denoting a fresh and unaged cheese and ‘greenhorn’, denoting an inexperienced person. Other positive associations with the colour include permission, safety, tolerance and calm. Red is associated with heat, blue with cold and green with an agreeable temperature. Red is the most active colour, blue the most passive and green is in the middle. This denotes a neutrality and balance of the colours. There are some negative connotations with the colour green, however, like jealousy and envy popularised by Shakespeare using the expression “green-eyed monster” and “green-eyed jealousy”. In myths and legends, many monsters are green.
In the Middle Ages, the devil was usually shown as red, black or green. Dragons were typically depicted green because of their reptile-like appearance; both reptiles and dragons would also have negative connotations to Christians and would usually be cognate with the devil in some form. Modern Chinese dragons are also commonly green in colour; unlike European dragons, they are benevolent and a symbol of power and good fortune. Another negative association with the colour is poison and sickness.
While the colour is paradoxically associated by Europeans and Americans with good health, it’s also associated with toxicity and poison. There are theories that the reason for this association is the prevalence of arsenic, copper and other highly toxic chemicals in several green paints and pigments during the 19th century. A green tinge in the skin is also associated with nausea and sickness; this is prevalent in the emojis of today, where throwing up and illness are both green-faced. There are many more associations with the colour, and green is an incredibly popular colour. While its most common and positive associations are nature, hope and prosperity, I have mixed feelings about the colour in my works.
In My Work
I like a dark and rich green, like that of old pine trees, but care little for the more vibrant greens. Green is usually found in my work in the form of cyan, where it’s mixed with blue to bring about a balanced colour of light. Even in my landscapes, the grass is often not purely green; there’s more of a colour ambiguity than the simple green fields of my childhood drawings. Green is just that to me - naive and youthful, especially in its most simple and single-hued form. I have good associations with the colour in nature, but in art, it’s often a sickly green.
When I began painting “Lady with a Hat”, at some point her skin was greenish, and it was a sickly colour. I spent hours fixing the mistake, and eventually the green subsided. Her face began to regain its colour, and it was once more filled with blood and life. In some ways, the painting was healed, and the green only stayed in the painting as the colour of her garb.
Cyan is a colour that is very important to me and holds significant spiritual significance, as well as being a soulful and balanced hue. Green is one aspect of cyan, but without blue from the heavens, it becomes materialistic and an artificial kind of green. It reminds me of plastic grass and artificial nature. It becomes poison of both body and mind. A sickly hue which infects every part of the canvas it touches. The motifs of the paintings where green is found are usually negative to me. It’s either an aura of deceit or toxicity that surrounds the portraits with green in them.
In the painting “Spiritual Ego” and many other portraits of mine, green is in the background or in the aura surrounding the person in the portrait. It’s a colour signalling illness, delusion and mental poison to me. It’s a well-meaning and calming natural colour, but its place outside of the foliage of the earth is unnatural and deceitful. Like camouflage, it hides true intentions and is not only used to hide from predators but also to conceal the predator. It’s commonly associated with frogs and reptiles, both of which I am a fan of, but both of which symbolically are negatively associated.
Reptiles are associated with the lower and carnal instincts of mankind, and so green signifies a spiritual naivety and youthfulness which can be both dangerous and deceiving. It can come with the feeling of invincibility that youth can give, and it can also be a cover for manipulation. But this colour is bright green, with more yellow in it than anything else. Dark green, as mentioned, holds a more positive connotation for me.
A darker green is more mature, and it holds the wisdom of the old forest. It’s a more comforting colour, less active and more restful. Being dressed in dark green is like a hug from a moss floor. Being encompassed in a bright green is like choking on a cloud of poison. I like green drinks and green food. Green tea is one of my favourite teas, and absinthe was my favourite alcoholic beverage when I drank and spinach makes you strong.
