Let there be light

"All perceiving is also thinking,
All reasoning is also intuition,
All observation is also invention."
Joseph Kosuth, Conceptual Artist






Joseph Kosuth, 1965, neon


Color is light and light is energy.  We love how it looks and it can profoundly affect how we feel.
Not everyone sees color the same way.
Some people even "hear" color.  I once taught a student with synesthesia.  Letters and numbers each had their own color.  Sounds appeared in her mind as colored textures.  David Hockney is a synesthete.  He is now deaf.  How much of his world is he missing?

Students worked on color wheels and color scales: tints, shades, monochromatic, and complementary color pairs.  They were forced to work with the incredibly cheap tempera paints.  The end result was often dreadful, but it also bordered on the sublime.




Both of these students broke with the idea of the wheel, instead exploring their own vision of how a system of hues can be mixed and presented.











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Comments

  1. They are all so different! I really like how the last one turned out.

    Synesthesia - that's fascinating. Poor David Hockney.

    Have you explored chakras? For a while there I was doing chakra meditations. I haven't done it for a while, but more recently I found myself moving into color in my mind when I closed my eyes to take a break from stress - either at work or going to sleep at night. I remember reading Michael Brown of The Presence Process, and he asked if we see certain emotions as particular colors.

    This reminds me that I like it in poetic writing when someone compares unlike things in unlike ways, like hearing a color, though I can't think of any right now.

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  2. Ruth, I also love the last image...what a fabulous mind at work, that one!

    I am sorry to say that I have little background in meditation and chakras. I know that it would help me deal with stress as well.

    Our senses are so underdeveloped. It is fascinating with artists, musicians and writers combine various modes. My son is believes that we humans are so out of touch with the world that we cannot feel half of what is going on!

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  3. I love the next to last image the best. All those bubbles make me smile.

    I had to make a color wheel in my beginning floristry class. I also used tempera paint but mine was not inventive at all.

    I worked with a woman who was a synesthete. I had no idea there was a name for the condition/talent.

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  4. oh i love the concept of hearing colors ! My approach to color changed completely since i moved to Andalusia.
    I like these basic primary colors.

    I wish you a wonderful Christmas Patricia !
    peace, love and joy...

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  5. I love your color lessons, Patricia, though I wonder if my own confusing rod and cone disorder keeps me from getting the right point. Think I'd rather have synesthesia... it sounds much more interesting (fascinating, really).
    I'd better watch what I wish for, right!?
    David

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