A Question of Colour

I've got a slight red green colour blindness but I think that since schooldays, when it was first recognised in a medical, I've educated my eye and compensated for it. Constable is said to have had a similar condition so I'm in good company.

The pebble-like tests (left, link to full test below) where you're supposed to read a number were the ones that I couldn't manage when I was at school, probably still couldn't now, but after art school I tried another type of test where you had to say which of three colours, shown as spots on a black background was most similar to a single spot shown above them (none were exact matches). I scored 100% at that, which pleased me.

It's hard to believe how monochromatic the 1950s and even the 1960s were here in Britain, with black and white television, magazines and so on. I think I've had far more chance to educate my eye since then.

I see '26' here, a person with a greater degree of red/green colour blindness would see only spots while someone with normal colour vision would see '29'.

I was so pleased when an artist friend said recently, glancing through my sketchbook, that I had a good eye for colour. 'Do you really think so?' I said.

One thing that knowing I have colour blindness gives me qualms about is that I don't think I can use colour as an emotional or symbolic device. This would be like me trying to be an opera singer without perfect pitch. But I'm very happy to sit in a landscape and be as honest as possible trying to capture the colour of a sky, a dead leaf etc. I'm aware of the limitations of photography to perform this function and I think that I can do as well as that.

For the same reason I can't get terribly interested in colour field abstract painting because I have an nagging doubt that I'm probably not seeing what the artist intended me to see. For this reason I've never studied it.

But the straightforward approach to colour - just paint what's there, then there's no excess baggage - fits in well with my approach to drawing too.

I used only three primaries - crimson, cadmium yellow pale and ultramarine - plus white when painting this acrylic on canvas. I like to keep things simple!

If I draw at willow I want it to look just like that particular willow, not a generic willow. I really look at it and I think the phrase 'a tree, is a tree, is a tree' would be a fair summary of what I'm trying to do, so I want that extra something, the symbolism and emotional impact, if any, to come from the tree itself with me as a medium through which the tree can express itself.

Symbolic Colour

Symbolic colour - painting the tree red as a metaphor for sacrifice for instance, wouldn't work for me. I'd rather my trees were the colour of lichen, algae, moss and bark and I'm content to let the natural symbolism come through. In fact I probably don't want even that - to make anything a symbol for something else - I think it's more important for the 'is-ness' to come through.