Yellow Room

From the “Work in Progress” blog series

This piece has been revised and is included in “Chapter 1, IV: Loss and Found, Not Quite Found,” Stay with Writing: Practices for Sustaining the Writer’s Work and Life.”  Sample of original blog with artwork included here. Artwork by Neil Freese.

I enter the yellow room.

Literally, I am in the south drawing room of Sir John Soane’s house (now museum) in Holborn. In 1833, Soane, a wealthy British architect, secured an Act of Parliament—to preserve, “in perpetuity,” his house as it was at the time of his death. Mostly, it is as it was then. 

I am here because a colleague, an expert in Eighteenth Century domestic spaces, says Soane painted the room its vibrant yellow because “he could,” and the paint would last. It was one of the first yellow paints that “didn’t oxidize and turn black.” For contemporary designer, Tim Gosling, “The spectacle of walking into a room that glows yellow must have been extraordinary.” 

It is. 

It also suggests another yellow room. My bedroom  (circa 1973) on Hubbard Drive. 

Like Soane, I made my room yellow because I could. He got access to more enduring paint, now called now called Soanian yellow. I got coveted space. The yellow on yellow made it feel like it was more than yellow. It was yellow’s yellow, an electric lemon,  brighter than daffodils, sharper than sunshine. 

“By doing the walls, the upholstery and the curtains in one color, without fringed and complicated passementerie, it became very contemporary,” Gosling says of Soane’s room. 

Maybe. But for me, the repeated use of yellow acts as a voice, corralling multiple stories. It speaks and signifies. 

I look a long way back. In my yellow room, I am sixteen.  

The room has two metal closet doors, painted yellow. The book shelves bracketed to a yellow wall are also painted yellow. 

The box springs and full-sized mattress sit on the floor pushed against another yellow wall. I have a window above my head and another near my feet so sunshine can cover me. Wispy, see-through, yellow polka-dot curtains hang across the windows. 

Yellow sheets, pillows cases, and duvet cover the mattress.

The room also has an alcove, painted yellow.  There is a wood desk inside it (I want to remember it as yellow, but did I paint it? Or is my mind trying to color it now?).

The floor lamp flagging the desk is absolutely yellow…

Here’s my leap. Please leap with me.

“Yellow Room” is truly a work in process. For a long time, I wasn’t sure it was a work in progress. I have a podcast in which I talk about it. I gave a conference presentation on it. I have at least six different versions of it. For years, I have not been able to complete it. 

Fun fact: I play with the present tense as a cheeky act of simplification. I only felt able to choose it though once I knew more about why I was creating this work. 

Do you have a piece that’s partial, incomplete, sitting in a drawer because it’s easier to put away than work with?  I hope what I’ve shared here might give you something to use or consider, but mostly I hope you’ll take it out once more—and see what happens. 

Oh, and--is this piece complete? For now, I’ve finished it, and I trust that.  

For more on the Soane Museum.

Items quoted are from “The Most Modern 18th-Century Room You’ve Ever Seen” by Elizabeth Hartmann.