‘Because painting is exclusively concerned with the seen, as distinct from the known, pictorial space and pictorial colour are virtually synonymous. That is to say, for the human eye there is no space without its colour; and no colour that does not create its own space.’ Patrick HERON p15

Colour has theoretical, perceptual and actual dimensions. The first, arising from the conclusion that colours should be represented by three-dimensional figures describing the hue or colour, its chroma, intensity or saturation, and its light reflective value. Perceptual dimensions include the spatial effects of certain colours, their spreading and contracting qualities, and the fact that reds and yellows, for example, appear to advance, in contrast to blues (and some greens) which appear to recede. The latter characteristic, referred to in ‘the blue-remembered hills’ of AE Housman, is employed by painters to suggest distance; it is described as ‘aerial perspective’.

The significance of the actual dimensions relevant to colour is so obvious that it is rarely mentioned, but most people experience difficulty in translating the small chips of colour seen indoors on paint cards to the enormously magnified reality of the outside world in which the problem is exacerbated by the more variable qualities of the light on the one hand, and by the much greater complexities of size, shape and colours of the surfaces. Although generalizations can reasonably be made about these: for example, by providing safeguards against random changes of emphasis on buildings the use of brilliant or Day-Glo colours, or recessive blues and blue-greens, each case should be considered in context.

ML

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