The Color of May / 2023

May’s Color of the Month is Fuchsia.

This vivid, practically fluorescent purplish-red-pink felt like the perfect match for May - especially how I experience May each year as a Floridian.

May is always the month when it feels like Florida’s summer really ramps up.

The clouds become thick and fluffy with humidity, the heavy summer rains make a comeback, and the heat spikes with such an intensity it’s as if the sun is saying, “I’m still here, baby. You haven’t forgotten about me, have you?”

I used to think May felt like sort of a slap in the face from Florida’s elements after a brief window of the most gorgeous winter weather you could imagine... but this May doesn’t feel like that at all.

Several years ago, Jesús and I found ourselves tired of being disgruntled by Florida’s warmer months – and more so, how we felt limited with things like outfits and activities due to that crazy warmth.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this place gets HOT in the summer—sweltering and sticky— a sweat-through-your-clothes-if-you’re-outside-for-more-than-10min-kind of hot.

Anyway, with a lifetime of that kind of summer heat under our belts, Jesús and I naturally found reasons to complain.

Around 2018, with empty complaints soaked in the reality that we didn’t feel called to move away anytime soon, Jesús and I had an epiphany.

In order to enjoy our lives in this place we called home, either Florida needed to change or we needed to. We realized our only option was to gain a new perspective and change our relationship to all this heat.

So we did two simple things:

1. We stopped dressing as if to defy the weather and bought more shorts and tanks. (It sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many stubborn and overheated Floridians there are down here regarding outfits.)

2. We went outside and embraced the natural beauty of our home. This meant spending time at our favorite parks around town (with new acceptance of the sweatiness) and spending A LOT more time at the beach.

These were game-changers.

In the process of doing these things, my perspective did a 180, and I fell more in love than ever with my home.

Things I used to hate about summer in Florida are now some of the things I love the most.

By spending so much time outside, enjoying the sun on my skin and how great it feels to sweat, I also began to notice the subtlest seasonal shifts!

The summer rains bring dense clouds, which lead to the best sunsets - shocking displays of orange and pink across the sky that move me to worship God.

The flowers that bloom this time of year mimic the same intensity of the sun with their vibrant hues.

And after months of chilly water, the Gulf of Mexico finally warms up again in May, creating a calm sea of bathwater for Jesús and me to float in. (Don’t come at me, FL friends, I *love* spending my mornings floating in the bathwater.)

All of these things that make May in Florida special in my eyes – this vivid and warm welcome to the days of summer – felt perfectly represented by the color Fuchsia.

A vibrant color for a vibrant month, and this intensely warm place I get to call my home.

I love you, Florida.

A fun little story about Fuchsia:

Fuchsia gets its name from a flower that shares this intense pinkish-purplish-red color.

Leonhard Fuchs, whom the flower is named after, was a prolific 16th-century German botanist.

Leonhard Fuchs spent his entire life researching plants and advancing the field of botany through the mid-1500s. And surprisingly, he never lived to see the flower that shares his name.

In 1703, the first Fuchsia specimen known to Europeans was discovered 137 years after Leonhard’s death.

A botanist named Charles Plumier found the flower and, wanting to honor his personal hero, named the flower “Fuchsia” after Leonhard Fuchs.

I found this story in a book on color (The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair, to be exact) that my friend, Erica, gifted me for my birthday. I enjoyed how much love and dedication for one’s craft is behind the name of this color, and I thought you might enjoy it as well. Feel free to dive deeper!

A giant handful of Zinnias from last May.

I was stunned on this day to find that a Magnolia flower has such an incredible Fuchsia center.

A farewell-for-the-season nod to my favorite sweater

In my house, I have a range of colorful objects that I’ve often used for styled photography projects… however, none of them are Fuchsia.

So I decided to expand my palette and create some new paintings in honor of May’s color.

These two paintings are called The Start of Summer and the Color of May and they’re now available to collect.

I’ve got some more Fuchsia waiting for you on Pinterest. Click here to see this month’s moodboard!

About the Painting: “Wedding at Cana”

The Color of April / 2023