Color - I Love it!

Color - I love it.

I adore the colors of sunrise and sunset. Those brilliant orange and
yellows combined with pinks, lavenders, and moving into the blues. 

I love the soft-moving to brilliant- colors of a sunrise, I love the color shifts and movements through the spectrum of sunset. I love the stark white of my egrets against the green of the trees and the dark green/brown waters they stalk their food in. I love the flash of red of a cardinal, the brilliant yellow of autumn leaves, and the intense blues of robin's eggs and blue jays.

The cones and rods allow for color perception. The eye, as
it interacts with the brain, also gives clues for spatial
perception and the basic light/dark that we see at night. 

Color is perception, and is filtered through each person's brain, registering as a color. Although human eyes contain cones and rods that enable us to see color, it is a fact that the perception is different for each person. According to legend, Van Gogh was able to perceive more than twenty different tones of yellow. It has been speculated that he actually suffered from xanthopsia, causing him to see the world through a yellow filter. For an interesting article on Van Gogh and xanthopsia, here's a link.

It is speculated that the halos seen by Van Gogh is a result of
digitalis poisoning during treatment of his mental illness, or
a part of his xanthopsia. The world has fallen in love with
his skewed perception of yellow. 

The perception of light is turned into color by moving through the eyes into cones and rods behind the eye and then interpreted by the brain. It can be can be different for each person. Many people are color blind in differing degrees and for different color groupings. The most common of these is the red-green color blindness, but there also is blue-yellow, and even a total color blindness which pushes the world around that person into shades of grey. (Article here.)

There are several different types of color blindness. Did you know
that 5.6% of all Caucasian boys are colorblind? Caucasians have
a higher percentage of color blindness than any other race, and
males are more likely to be color blind than females.  

I see color, in fact I revel in color. I've been known to catch my breath at the beauty of color sometimes. I am delighted that I live in a world of color. At this time of the year, it's the greens that take over my visual horizon. The brilliant yellow-greens of new leaves, the darker greens of the evergreens, and the mid-range greens of the leaves from the fruit trees which have already lost their blossoms. The grass is growing, the pond scum is beginning to cover some smaller ponds and waterways, and even the shady places are green tinged. My fingers itch to bring these greens into my artwork.

I love the greens of nature. Our ferns are coming up very well, and
our trees are fully leaved now. Although there is a chance of
frost for another two weeks, it's unlikely and very short lived.
We're through our winter and ready for our spring and summer. 

Yesterday I spent an hour with my orbital sander and a couple of my wooden boxes. Time to bring the boxes to the next level - finish the exteriors and build the interiors. I have had these on my back burner for quite a while now. I think I need to create some art. YES! Happy Thursday, all!