Three places to find colour during achromatic Regina winters
Dessart Sweets shines in pastels while the Regina Floral Conservatory goes for a spectrum of colours
A UBC professor says colour can have an affect on mood, happiness and stress. CBC Saskatchewan stepped out to visit three places working to stay bright and beat the winter blues. Where do you go to find colour in the Saskatchewan winters? Email morningedition@cbc.ca
Liane Gabora says colour can elicit positive responses when the weather gets cold, offering a temporary but helpful feeling of warmth and calm.
People should try to take notice of their feelings and reactions to colour, said Gabora, who has a doctorate in psychology and is a professor at the UBC Okanagan Campus. She focuses on how the creative process works and how creativity fuels the evolution of culture.
"People just sort of gloss over that aspect of life and they don't necessarily take note of how colour is impacting them," she said.
Here are three places in Regina that stand out for maintaining their colour all year round.
Regina Floral Conservatory
"You walk in here and the first thing even before you see the flowers and the display is that you smell the air," Colleen Sampson, president of the Regina Garden Associates, said. "This is a special place and there's something different than you would experience anywhere else and particularly in the prairies."
Regina Garden Associates is a volunteer organization that manages the Regina Floral Conservatory. The donation-based greenhouse has contrasting colours of bright yellows, purples, reds, magenta, coral and a variety of green shades.
"When you come here, you can just sit and relax and breathe in the moisture and your cares seem to fall away."
Green is an interesting colour because of the relation to nature and culture, Gabora said. Green can also help because it stimulates positive feelings such as green on a stop light meaning go.
However, Gabora said the feeling can be temporary or not as strong as some people may like.
"There is some evidence that for example, if you walk into a blue room you're going to feel more calm but in a minute or two that effect will wear off," she said.
Dessart Sweets Ice Cream & Candy Store
Some colours can also have positive feelings due to nostalgia.
"It's really striking how people's colour preferences, they go back way into your childhood and the earliest memories that you have," she said. "They really have these deep roots in the human psyche."
Walking into Dessart Sweets, the pastel walls emphasize the variety of colourful candies that line the shelves. There's items to embrace nostalgia, including Dutch Licorice, Nerds candy, old drinks, and more.
"I guess it's a bit of sensory overload," owner Shelley Patterson said with a laugh. "My store is small, everything is jam packed."
Patterson is immediately drawn to the rock candy by the front door. A rainbow of colours in individual glasses greet customers at the entrance. Patterson said she's particularly drawn to pastels.
"They're not overly bright. They don't have ugly undertones. They just are really pleasant to look at," she said.
Nouveau Gallery Inc.
Just down the road from the sweet shop, a place takes a different view on colour. Stepping into Nouveau Gallery, even on stormy days, the light streams into the windows and brightens the space.
"I'm motivated by colour," Sharon Eisbrenner, the self-described "computer monkey" at the commercial gallery, said. As she walks around, she stops at a landscape that overlooks a waterway.
A lot of art elicits a positive response. You'll remember something or it will remind you of a place or the colour will make you happy.- Meagan Perreault
"[It] takes you in it beautifully," she said. "Flowers and grasses meandering through a landscape with trees in the distance and nice clouds — it's a happy place. It's a place where there would be birds chirping and quiet sounds and it's a very positive painting."
Gallery owner Meagan Perreault said she hopes the artwork and colours speak to people.
"A lot of art elicits a positive response. You'll remember something or it will remind you of a place or the colour will make you happy," Perreault said.
By using a clean space with pops of colour, Gabora said the gallery is making the right call.
"I have noticed that colour can be even more striking and have more of an impact when it's used a little bit sparingly," she said. "You can almost become immune to the effect of colour if everything is brightly coloured. But if it's more of an occasional burst, you can appreciate it."
With files from Laura Sciarpelletti and The Morning Edition