In her book The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair writes that ‘[a] certain distaste for colour runs through Western culture like a ladder in a stocking’. A distraction from form, dishonest, even sinful – these are some of the many attitudes towards vibrant colour expressed by Westerners, from Herman Melville to Le Corbusier. Colour, when used, was often highly controlled and hugely political – and remains so.

But colour is also liberating, passionate, playful. St Clair’s book is full of the surprising stories of colour, such as the link between green and envy in Shakespeare, the unmasking of a Vermeer forger by the use of cobalt blue, and the origins of the acid yellow smiley (now more familiar as an emoji) in 1970s protest movements.

Summer is coming to an end, and we thought it would be good to remind ourselves of the pleasures of vibrant colour as we move into a more muted palette. We give you images we’ve captured this past year, bookmarked with two artists – Trinidadian British textile designer Althea McNish and Brazilian painter Beatriz Milhazes. Each was the focus of a solo exhibition here in England – McNish in the Colour Is Mine exhibition last summer at the William Morris Gallery in London, and Milhazes at the Maresias exhibition this summer at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, which surprisingly twinned that conflicted seaside resort with Rio. In between these two, we highlight some of the work we’ve done that celebrates the joy of bright colour.