#30 The Color of Light

My art teacher set up a still-life and shined a green spotlight on it when I was studying color theory in college. We were supposed to study how colors reacted in different kinds of light.

Partway through the exercise, I heard, “Are you color blind?”

One of my classmates had painted a still-life that was perfectly proportioned, subtle, and completely bathed in red light.

I speculated that he’d done it on purpose to demonstrate how he wasn’t restricted to conventional vision, like the rest of us. The tubes of paint were labelled, after all.

It took me a day to realize that it didn’t matter if the paints were labelled if you couldn’t see the color of the light in the first place.

Of course, I can’t think of this without thinking of the ways in which I’m blind, myself. It’s far less straight forward.