I would hate to upset anyone here as I love this site & visit it daily. It is helpfull, friendly & it feels good to be part of such a large online artistic community.
This is how I feel about the subject:

I reset my browser so it wouldn't display my adjusted colour settings so I could view the site as new users would see it. I'm sorry but I didn't like it at all.
I asked some people that were in my house at the time to see what they thought (without prompting them or telling them what I thought).
They all used the same or similar words, amateur, ugly & other derogatory statements about the colour scheme.
I agree that functionality is very important & if most peple are honest they would prefer a simple clean site to one that employs heavy use of Flash, Shockwave, wierd scripts, pop-ups & god knows what else. However...Art is all about style over content. An appealing colour scheme is very important to most people & has nothing to do with the functionality of a web site & would not effect the speed of the site.
I thought it was just me, but I have yet to find someone that likes the colour scheme & its a shame that something as simple as that could do so much damage to what is otherwise a brilliant web site.

Having said that, the Logo is great.

Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?