. Rojo, Voros, Beni and Rossa. The color red is just as sexy to say in any language as it is to see. Everything about the color transcends mere colourdom. There is no competitor on the color wheel that is as heavily laden with emotion.

It's the color of passion, in some cultures its the color of bridal dresses And in accounting it's the color of debt.

It's the most political color as well. Red has been used as an ethnic slur towards Native Americans. Red is the banner hue of communism, socialism and most other radicalisms. U2's famous song Bloody Sunday floods the mind of political dissent and is sung by revolutionaries throughout the world. In Asia, red symbolizes a rise in prices, while in the US it signifies a drop.

Red is religious. Red is the devil. In East Asia it's even taboo to write a living person's name with red ink.

Red is organic and medicinal. Our blood is red when air hits it, the most famous charity is known as the Red Cross.

Red is shame. The thought of sin and shame attach themselves to the name of any red-light district. Embarrassment or guilt redden our cheeks.

Red is sex. Red is romance. Red roses may not be everyone's preference but they are the most significant. Red is a Valentine's heart. Red are the flowers that mean I love you. Red are the lips you want to kiss. Red is the underwear that seduces.

Red is a rich variety of emotions from anger, passion, lust and love.

There are many colors and shades that may be more suitable for a particular mood. But red is the most extravagant and luxurious of them all. Were red to be alcohol it would be champagne. When red was Asian it was known as Mao, when it was Russian it was known as Lenin. Red has already been Latin in Che Guerrera and it's even been black before in Michael Jordan.

Legends who have donned red have become linked to the color. Red is the only color that is as linked to beauty and tragedy as life itself. Its lighter shade pink is linked to femininity and all things cute and pure. But red itself is the immovable, unwavering wavelength of the human spectrum.

My heart is green; the organ sends the hue throughout my body.

For such along time I have tried in earnest to cast myself in a mould that is not Irish. I have deliberately and steadfastly, in spite of 12 years of schooling, refused to learn the Irish language. 

I have often thought about blowing up Irish pubs abroad because they were the only manifestation of ourselves that we could offer the world.

This identity of Ireland is a malignant abstraction requiring nil imagination - just commercial balls.

And yet when asked to describe the Ireland that I have returned to and left - all I can offer is green. It's green.  But what's more pure than a colour?

And so cliché. The Emerald Island.  Forty shades of green - one of them being green Guinness. To be Irish is to be affected by this colour.

The country was created with strands of green; fields laden with the evening dew, streams absorbing the lush colour.  It's hard to think of a greener land, well except Green Land.

Green is such a universal colour and a painterly delight, and yet to me it exists most serenely in my minds eye. 

I have seldom if ever encountered a painting which encapsulates the wild authority of the green grasses which grow on the slopes of the south west of Ireland.

If one colour stands for the persistence of nature in the battle with man it's green. The green I know is not the one that's been misappropriated by everyone from Tescos to BP to political parties. No this green is wild and tragic and yet green, rather like man.