I think my sense of color I have got from my upbringing in Peru.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My father was Bolivian, which makes me half-Bolivian. It's where I got some of my exotic features and certainly my skin tone.
I come from a mixed background - my mom's black, my dad's white - and I traveled around the world.
I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me.
I think we all are kind of colored by whatever we were raised with or what we came up believing in.
I was raised in Nigeria, and my mother is white, but I never saw her as white, not until I came to America. She was just my mother. She didn't really have a color.
I grew up on the coast of England in the '70s. My dad is white from Cornwall, and my mom is black from Zimbabwe. Even the idea of us as a family was challenging to most people.
I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.
I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase.
I learned my color in Europe. I've always been a colorist, I think. I started when I was very young, being a bird-watcher, fascinated by the bird colors.
It had never occurred to me that my colour - or lack of it - was an issue for some people, but then I moved to Sydney, and apparently it was. People look at me and don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. Thankfully, my mother raised me well in knowing where I come from and who I am, and I'm proud of that.