I anticipated lavender areas would help pop autumn colors to express how I felt about Ritner Creek. I began the painting on a prepared ground of lavender with a band of blue tint grayed with burnt sienna at the top. Before my surgery I was unaware that the lavender I was painting was so saturated. It looked almost gray to me like the photo shopped one below.
October 30th I had cataract surgery on my right eye.
The second is close to what I now see with my new artificial lens.
Just goes to show how we perceive the world depends on the lens with which we view it. We do not sense the actual object through our eyes. We see the color not absorbed by the object. We see energy reflected by the object and how the energy flows through the lens in our eye and is channeled to the brain.
Thus an analogy is drawn between perception of colors and our perception of other aspects of life. I am aware of my lens on politics tending to bend information towards what I want to believe and the structural beliefs of my lens will not focus on information that does not affirm what I want to see.
Our preferences depend on familiarity: Over past decades the desire for saturated colors has increased a demand for more colorful greeting cards due to the public getting used to TV screen colors. Our figurative lens through familiarity not only finds saturated color more acceptable, we buy more saturated color items.
In 2018 more family and friends are looking at my abstracts than they use to. Thirty years ago I used to watch gallery visitors walk right by my work. Now people look until the colors and textures affect them - calming them, or energizing them, or striking other emotional connections. In the last ten years or so more people are used to seeing abstract work and the vibrantly colors on their electronic devises. Face book plays a part in getting the general public seeing things in intensified color hues, resulting in a preference for brighter colors. In addition to accepting modified colors more people are able to connect with the abstract.
Equally abstract paintings in 1959 went unnoticed or loudly condemned by many, even by artists. Human nature rejects the different and strange. The viewer were more easily gratified by instantly recognizable objects.
In 1959 the Portland, Oregonians' were angered by Louis Bunces' abstract mural for the Portland Airport. It was hotly debated. The opposition wanted a pastoral scene. His mural still graces a wall on the way to the concourses. He pioneered the public display of the abstract and his work continues to familiarize us with a broader appreciation.
I am tempted to go back and change some of my paintings with lavendar and greens and yellows. The red ones have not changed as much. But maybe in time I will get familiar with the new way I see colors and I will accept the old paintings as they are.
7 comments:
Do you have a cataract in the other eye that you will have removed?
Yes I still have a cataract in the left eye. I compare what I see in the left eye to the clean right eye. No more taupe green early morning skies. I could not believe the predawn sky was violet.
Paul had one but not influencing his vision-- last check up. So far, I haven't had one. I'd need to pay for lasik to get my vision normal.
If the vision of a child with 20/20 is normal, we will never get back to that at our age because the artificial lens has just one focus and for other distances corrective lenses must be added. Also if you have an asstigmatism the lens i have now may not correct that meaning I will need some combination of contacts and glasses for close up vision. Today i purchased reading glasses. Makes reading a lot more comfortable.
Great post on color and perception. I also like your description of how the public perceives color and Abstraction now, and how that has changed. Thought provoking!
I know so many who've had the surgery. I wonder if people always did but just couldn't fix it or if it's more common. Paul's was thought to come from welding even using protective glasses as it wasn't where they generally are. I know almost nothing about cataracts
Thank you Rain and Ruth for commenting.
Over thirty years ago in the figure drawing group that I often facilitated, three of the oldest artist had cataracts. They waited to get them fixed until they literally drew blind from memory. It was amazing how well they were able to draw from life models when they couldn't see what they were doing.
Rain I can't pretend to be an expert on other kinds of cataracts. Just know that the color changes can be varied.
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