Feelings & Thoughts #1: Poster
Feelings & Thoughts is a project that explores our emotional existence via colour and language.
Malachy collected 64 feelings and thoughts from life. Some, like ‘vacillating’, are lofty and literary, others, like ‘crabby’, are every-day. Whether or not we know the words, we know the feelings. The aim of the project is to facilitate empowering experiences of giving feelings names - thus knowing them a little better when we meet them.
Having sorted the feelings into groups, Malachy worked with artist Tamsyn Blackman to give each thought and feeling a colour. Some were easy, intuitive and felt universal. Others required more debate. Malachy, who is colour blind, experienced the hues and tones differently, adding a further layer to the discussion.
In the course of the conversation memories were stirred and deep rooted associations uncovered. It was interesting to see how the colour names on the cards Malachy and Tamsyn used chimed - or did not - with those personal experiences and feelings. Vivid Imagination found itself beside ‘gaslighted’. The colour looks sunny in this photo, but in reality, it is what Tamsyn called ‘a nasty little colour’ with abject pond slime tones.
The feeling and thought cards and their assigned colours were handed in neat bundles to designer and writer Sarah Conway, who mapped them out in circles for Malachy and Tamsyn to approve. Everyone loved the way they looked in this format, leading to the decision to create some posters - not the original plan, but a very happy accident!