Do you see what I see? Painting with color
Vivid colors arranged in creative combinations characterize many of my paintings. Color in a painting can be a siren’s whisper or an aggressor’s angry shout. Consider how others have described the power of color:
“Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.” Wassily Kandinsky
“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” Oscar Wilde
“I found I could say things with colors that I could not say in any other way, things for which I had no words.” Georgia O’Keeffe
We do not all interpret the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the same way. The average person sees about a million different colors, though most of us would find it impossible to reliably distinguish subtle color differences, and don’t even think about trying to name all the various shades! Some individuals, however, possess extraordinary color vision. Due to genetic variation in the X chromosomes, some women may be able to distinguish up to 100 times more colors than the average person.1 Indeed, on average, females see, perceive and talk about color differently than males.2 In comparison, a color-blind person may see as few as 10,000 colors.
How does such an assortment of colors affect my painting? Utilizing a colorful palette does not in itself guarantee a pleasing painting. An artist considers whether colors are pure or dull, bright or subdued, and how they contrast or complement one another. But even that is not enough, elements of color—shapes, lines, texture—must be arranged to draw the viewer into the painting and engage their emotions and thoughts. Done well, a painting’s composition can elicit the desired effect even when the colors I use are not what another person sees.
I have a color-blind son, who is a fan of my work. This intrigues me because I know he sees my paintings differently than I do. Take for example my painting Aurora, shown below in three versions. The original with reds and greens, a red-green color-blind version, and one in grayscale. Does the painting have merit even with a different color palette or no color at all?
Aurora
I think the contrasting reds and greens add a lot to the painting, but even in the absence of color the light and dark forms hold the composition. In the color-blind version, the blue and yellow highlights among the grays enhance the design. In trying to appreciate what my color-blind son sees in the painting I remind myself that he interprets it in the context of a world of blues and yellows and grays.3 How we see a visual work of art, what pleases us in a painting, and what we react to is constrained by the way we see the world. In fact, none of us perceive all the colors of the universe. Birds, for example, have four types of retinal photoreceptor cones to our three and see colors in the world that we cannot, including ultraviolet. And consider how the world must look to the mantis shrimp with sixteen distinct color-receptive cones!
Perhaps it is not surprising that the paintings my son likes best are ones dominated by blues and yellows as shown below.
Untitled painting in my son’s collection—the original and as he sees it.
Untitled painting in my son’s collection—the original and as he sees it.
1 Jordan, G., and J. Mollon. 2019. Tetrachromacy: the mysterious case of extra-ordinary color vision. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 30:130-134.
2 Fider, N. A., and Komarova, N. L. 2019. Differences in color categorization manifested by males and females: a quantitative World Color Survey study. Palgrave Communications 5:142. https://doi.org /10.1057/s41599-019-0341-7
Peace . . .
