Color Junkie

Violette Clark lives a colorful life. The exterior of her Surrey, B.C., cottage is purple, and the deck and yard are a gallery for her functional and decorative art. Each interior room has its own color scheme featuring myriad jewel tones.

The 55-year-old has always loved color, but she began saturating her home with it following the break-up of her marriage 14 years ago.

"When I went off and bought my own cottage, it was as if someone had given me a crayon and said I could do anything I wanted," she says. "It was liberating. You don't have to consider everybody else you live with."

Embracing what she calls her "inner eccentric friend" has opened many doors for Clark.

Ten years ago, she asked for a dream that would guide her artistic direction. The dream told her to paint all the doors in her home.

"When I woke up, I thought, 'What the heck???' But I felt so strongly about this guidance that i did indeed begin to paint my doors," she recalls. After she'd covered a few with folk-art designs, she contacted Weird Homes TV. That led to a feature on her "magic cottage," and several more segments on Life and HGTV, as well as several magazine and newspaper articles.

"I realized that my mission in life was to inspire people to be themselves and defy the rules of convention. That has pretty much been my guiding principle since then," Clark says.

She offers painting and decorating workshops, and provides step-by-step instructions for crafts projects on her YouTube Channel, Creative Boho.  She also wrote a book, Journal Bliss: Creative Prompts To Embrace Your Inner Eccentric. 

If you're a bit more cautious about color, but crave a brighter home, Clark says that paint is the cheapest and best tool. "Paint is relatively cheap, but it makes a dramatic change in your environment," she says. "If you don't like the color, you can always paint over it."

Experiment with a room that you don't use every day, she suggests, such as a guest room or powder room. Read up a bit about the psychology of color, and choose a shade that will create the mood you want; for example, blues and greens are calming, while yellow and orange are energizing.

Be inspired by nature, where a profusion of color is exciting and never seems to clash. Clark often finds a flower or object and asks the paint store to match it. "I think you can learn from nature," she says. "Nature can't be wrong."

To see more of Clark's home and art work, visit our photo gallery, Violette Clark: Life in Color.