Colour is the word we use to describe the way that the human brain perceives different light wave lengths reflected or emitted by things we see. I LOVE COLOUR.
Some people are ‘colour blind’, most often men although the colour blindness gene travels through the female line.
What number can you see?
57 – standard colour perception
35 or nothing – degree of colour defiency
1 in 255 women and 1 in 12 men have some form of ‘colour defiency’.
Some people are synaesthesic, which means that their brains make connections between colours and other things, such as music, or smells, or letters, numbers, words.
There was a Finnish composer who ‘saw’ music and ‘heard’ colours. He was once asked what colour he wanted his new stove to be. “F major” was his reply, so they brought him a green one.
We can never be sure that someone else ‘sees’ the same colour as we do, or responds to it in the same ways.
And how we perceive a colour can differ depending on which other colours are near to it, the colour of the light hitting it, and many other factors.
Albers Colour Exercise
In music, while we can hear a single note, a multitude of notes are needed to create a melody.
Similarly with images – we are rarely able to see a single colour without other colours around it, interacting with and effecting it.