“You do what?” is usually the response I get when someone asks what I do. When friends ask my family what I do, it ranges from business consultant to teacher. No one seems to know exactly. I guess it fits well with the twenty-two-hour window of possibility as to the time I was born. My Mum has one version, my Dad another, and my Grandmother a different one too. I was born a mystery so why not choose a vocation which no one can define too. I guess the question might be is, did I choose the vocation or did colour choose me?
To understand that we need to go back to near the beginning, and like all good stories, let’s start with once upon a time…
One Sunday morning, when I was about six, we were visiting my grandmother, I remember very clearly being absolutely mesmerised by a magical rainbow shining brightly on the ceiling. It was caused by sunlight shining brightly through a string of glass beads on the windowsill.
For me these colours on the ceiling were incredibly exciting, they seemed alive and full of stories and endless adventures. Little knowing this was my first encounter with my future life’s calling.
The beads were there because my grandmother wanted me to give the beads to the little girl next door. Somehow those beads never did quite make it to next door. Instead, they were carefully unstrung in order to create many rainbows.
Jump forward in time to my early twenties and you find me in London at Richmond Theatre, training in special effects make-up with George Frost, an amazing man full of stories of working on films such as African Queen, James Bond, and “doing make-up” for Marilyn Monroe. It was a blessing to have met George, and although I didn’t pursue a career in make-up, being in the film and theatre industry had an unknowingly familiar feel to it.
I met Jan around the same time and when she started talking to me about colour healing it was as though she was talking a language that my Soul understood. It was much like tuning in an analogue radio and from that moment on colour radio has been broadcasting on full service ever since.
Soon after Jan became my teacher at the Colour Harmonic Foundation, I excelled in colour psychology and had an aptitude for translating the language of colour into human behaviour. The follow-on training was to learn how to treat the body with coloured light, however, I knew by then I was on a different colour journey. Thereafter I started helping people to bring colour to life through dreams, drama, and story.
My mission, if you like, was and continues to be, helping people become more conscious of the colours they surround themselves with. Part of that conscious awareness is learning to perceive colour as a living energy. One of the best ways I help people with that is to suggest to someone that as much as they may dislike a colour, maybe, just maybe, the colour feels the same way about you too! This is where the drama and story comes into its own. If you were a colour, how would you feel, act, and show up in the world?
In the 90’s I gave regular talks and consultations at some of the leading health spas and resorts around the UK. It seemed I had a natural gift and ability for speaking on behalf of colour and being able to help people know themselves more through colour.
During that time, I was a regular guest on many TV shows, which included working for Manchester United Television presenting on the history and psychology of the Man Utd football strip. I did dating shows for couples to explore their compatibility purely through the colours they had in their wardrobes and the colours they had in their environment. Wherever we place colour, it always has a story to tell, and it seems that I just happen to have the gift to tell it.
A few years before that in 1991 I was in a book shop in Norwich. It was one of those ordinary kinds of days where I was browsing through the Mind Body Spirit section. I had picked up two books wondering which of the two to buy as I could only afford one. “They look interesting books” said the lady now standing in front of me. I hadn’t noticed her come upstairs into the quiet corner where the Mind Body Spirit section was situated. At a guess, she was mid to late sixties, kindly looking, with an interest in the books I had chosen.
Before I had the chance to reply to her about each book, she boldly stepped forward and assertively tapped her right index finger two or three times on the cover of “Other Lives, Other Selves” by Roger Woolger. Again, before I could say anything she said, “I would buy this one if I were you. You never know it might just change your life one day.” With that she turned around and walked off.
When I went downstairs to pay for Other Lives, Other Selves, she was nowhere to be seen. To this day I strongly believe she was an angel in disguise. Nine years later I trained with Roger Woolger in his method of Deep Memory Process. DMP is a way to explore the many lives of the Soul and all of its unfinished business. It just so happens that colour is an amazing time traveller. It can take us into the past, the future and the present too, all at the speed of light. Choose a colour and let the storybook of your Soul do the rest.
As well as a practitioner I also became a trainer of the method. Roger was not only my teacher, but we also became very good friends too. The lady was absolutely right, both the book and Roger did change my life.
By now you might have guessed I love stories, and that love spreads across into film too. My passion for film started very young. Somewhere around the age of 9 or 10 I wrote a film script in purple ink on a school typewriter, knowing exactly how to lay it out and where to include director comments. I remember feeling upset and frustrated when no-one believed that I just knew what to do. I now know, through my studies of archetypes, colour, drama, psychodrama, and past lives, that they are all tools to access the many different stories we tell to and about ourselves.
If I hadn’t followed this path I would have loved to work with film, directing probably. During a coaching session some years ago, my coach suggested I had in a way woven film directing into my work anyway. It was only when he pointed out how I create and bring scenes to life for clients and groups, directing them in ways to bring healing and transformation.
In lockdown I got the wonderful opportunity to teach Masterclasses to animation and film students around the world about colour as a visual narrative in film. We brought colours to life through character building and colour scene setting. Have you ever watched a film without sound, and just paid attention to the colour?
Somewhere in the middle of all of this there was the dream in 2011. Well, more like that in-between state of sleeping and waking. I was living in Lisbon at the time. A male voice simply said, “Of course, you are the colour ambassador you know” I woke up with such a start, looking around the room and then the apartment to see where this speaking person was. Needless to say, there was no one there, physically there wasn’t anyway.
It was one of those experiences that stays with you, the kind that won’t leave you alone until you’ve gotten the message. I mentioned to a few trusted friends, they responded by rolling their eyes, followed by something along the lines of, “Duh, yea, of course you are”
I tried it on for size. When someone asked me my title I would half mumble “Colour Ambassador”, I’d come to realise that maybe my friends were right and maybe I was a kind of spokesperson on behalf of colour. I often talked about and described my work as giving colour a voice. But still…
I worked with a coach to help me to feel comfortable or feel worthy of such a title. It helped, at least I was able to say “Colour Ambassador” without swallowing the words. Then one day whilst giving a talk in Dubai, the host of the event introduced me by saying, “We are very pleased to welcome Global Colour Ambassador Mark Wentworth…” Global seemed to be the magic word that made it feel real, and that it finally was a truth belonging to and referring to me. Every day feels like an honour to serve and speak on behalf of something so magnificent.
I work with individuals and groups using colour, dreams, drama and story, as a way of exploring creative projects, stuck points, team building, confidence and general wellbeing. I’ve brought colour to life in numerous settings and in many creative and different ways, from sitting in front of the lion’s enclosure at London Zoo dressed as a Roman “Colour Expert” Soothsayer at a corporate event, to working with creative teams setting new goals in the skyscrapers of the Middle East, teaching colour healing to nurses at New York’s Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital ER department and helping final year students in NYU Steinhardt’s Performing Arts Department explore their creative potential through a ColourDrama Masterclass.
Over time I have carefully woven these different threads together to create what is now called Colour PsychoDynamics. Its purpose is simple, to help people live their own best life.
I have to date worked professionally with colour for thirty-six years, my journey has been exactly as my 6-year-old self experienced it, full of stories and endless adventures all around the world. I help people to develop a deeper relationship with themselves through this amazing thing called colour.
It is often said that children are some of our best teachers. One Saturday morning when teaching a group of children in downtown Beirut, 12-year-old Kareem politely raised his hand and declared that this had been his best Saturday morning ever, and if I promised to do colour work forever, he would attend every class. I am deeply grateful to Kareem; my answer was, and remains, a most definite, Yes! I promise to do this colour work forever!
This colour radio station remains well and truly tuned in.
It was with great honour that in 2023, I was awarded the Zerka T. Moreno Award from the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama (ASGPP). The award is given to an individual for distinguished work in psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy, and for professional activities leading to the utilisation and awareness of psychodrama around the world. My training and supervision in psychodrama is ongoing.
A journalist once wrote; “Mark Wentworth is to colour what hearing is to music. He observes, he notes, he delves, and he emerges with answers, which can be as astounding as the realisation that comes from the understanding of a symphony in all its glory. By sharing his deeply personal love for, and joy of colour, he invites us to join him in seeing rainbows of hope and understanding where many of us just see cloudy grey skies” As my life story has unfolded, it has become clearer that I chose colour as much as it chose me. It is something that lives with me and through me on a daily basis. Being born at a mysterious time seems fitting to work in the place of betwixt and between, the place where the rainbow ends, and the colour stories begin. I’ll meet you there.
