When Colour Becomes Incantation
There is a point, while working with colour, when it stops behaving like pigment and starts behaving like intention. I felt this shift clearly after encountering the Baz Luhrmann aesthetic, where saturation is never decoration but emotional force. His worlds glow and thrum, carrying the viewer into heightened states of feeling. When I began painting my own botanical atmospheres, I realised I was using colour the same way, calling emotions forward through saturated greens, electric magentas, glowing reds and neon halos that soften or ignite whatever they touch. These hues become more than visual accents. They work like spells.
Saturated Greens as Grounding Magic
Luhrmann’s greens are rarely calm. They shimmer, pulse or vibrate with a sense of anticipation, turning garden scenes or interior spaces into emotional landscapes. My own greens behave with similar intensity. They carry the weight of forests I’ve imagined, the softness of moss, the emotional grounding found in Slavic and Baltic nature myth. When I saturate green in a bloom or root system, it becomes a kind of stabilising magic—something that anchors the composition, guiding the viewer back to breath and body. The intensity is not meant to overwhelm; it is meant to steady.
Magentas and Reds as Emotional Heat
The magentas and reds in Luhrmann’s films feel like heartbeats. They mark desire, urgency, revelation. I follow the same emotional pulse in my art. When I paint with saturated reds, they rarely sit quietly on the surface. They radiate outward like heat from a hidden ember. Magenta behaves even more intuitively—half fire, half dream, always carrying some internal tension. These colours work as emotional catalysts, shifting the atmosphere of the image and igniting the symbolic narrative. They create temperature, pressure and intensity before the viewer fully understands why.
Neon Halos as Intuitive Light
Luhrmann uses neon as emotional illumination. It outlines a mood, frames a character, or marks a moment when reality becomes slightly unreal. In my work, neon halos emerge from petals, surround symbolic eyes or drift along the edges of botanical forms. They behave not as literal light but as intuitive recognition—the moment something internal becomes visible. A neon halo is the glow of a thought, a memory resurfacing, a feeling returning to itself. It is the soft boundary between what is sensed and what is revealed.
Spellwork Through Saturation
What fascinates me most about saturation is its ability to change emotional frequency. A colour intensified becomes a statement. A palette pushed to its limits becomes a ritual. Luhrmann’s films taught me that emotional truth often arrives through visual excess, not restraint. Saturation can hold depth. It can carry tension. It can whisper or howl depending on how it’s placed. When I use extreme colour in my botanica—emeralds beside violets, neon beside shadow—I’m not chasing spectacle. I’m performing subtle spellwork, aligning colour with intention, feeling and symbolic meaning.
The Dream Logic Behind Intense Colour
Colour saturation works because it speaks directly to the intuitive mind. Luhrmann’s aesthetic often feels dream-like, not because it escapes reality but because it intensifies it. I paint from the same logic. The dream world is where symbolism grows naturally—petals become masks, seeds become eyes, shadows become emotional thresholds. Saturated colour becomes a key in this world, unlocking narratives that are felt more than interpreted. Dream logic invites the viewer to enter the scene with their intuition first.
Why Colour Saturation Continues to Guide My Practice
I return to saturated colour because it mirrors the emotional clarity I seek in my work. It allows a symbolic world to emerge with force and tenderness at the same time. Luhrmann showed me that boldness can be honest, and that colour can be a direct route to truth. My botanica need this intensity. They thrive in luminous tension. They bloom more vividly when the hues refuse to soften. In saturation, I find a way to paint not just what I see, but what I feel—and what I want the viewer to feel with me.
