Painterly perceptions of colour
Without light there is no colour. We learn to see or perceive colour from the way coloured light is transferred to our eyes. Some visual artists have tried to investigate transparencies of colour as a parallel to polyphony and counterpoint in music. Their objective was to reach the ideal artistic experience without the representation of forms—instead of light as it falls on natural surfaces or light reflected between objects, to have light reflected between layers of colour to form rhythms of colour through reflected light.
About colour formulae
Many have tried to explain colour with formulae. The formulae, if followed directly, drastically limits the artist’s ability to experiment, innovate and improvise. For example, when painting with watercolours it doesn’t take long to realise that it is impossible to know completely how colours will behave. The colours merge during the application of washes, sometimes in amazing and wonderful ways, but the results are always unpredictable to some extent—that is the marvel of it.
Why do colours change their behaviour in an instant? Why do colours at times advance and at others recede? Why is it that the colour blue can be light, shadow or anything in between in a painting? What colour is light? What colour is shadow? These are long-held problems for painters. There are really no hard-and-fast rules in the use of colour in painting, although there are patterns that artists find useful each in their own way.