Blush Reference

“Better paint your house your own complexion: let it turn pale or blush for you.”
–Walden and Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau laments the division of labor that prohibits man from building his own dwelling. By the personal investment of constructing a house “the necessities and character of the indweller” become revealed in its timber, and the house becomes imbued with a personal virtue. Beauty then, he reasons, is derived from a self-sufficiency and practicalness that no pretty architect nor pretending painter can replicate.

No doubt potters who eat with their own dishes are excused from such clownish characterizations. I would that I could paint my door as red as a big, round nose. Or that house colors really did reflect the complexion of physiognamies. But this is not for exteriors and facades to accomplish is it?

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