Origins
The Prima Materia of my endeavors in color
Once there was a special moment that awakened my mind’s eye; a random encounter with Monet ended up changing everything for me — blues and greens playing with each other over a dark background, no figures, just brushstrokes of color, forming a luminous dreamworld with great depth — leading me into a lifelong pursuit of that experience of wonder.
Today, I’m a Human Machine Interface and User Experience designer with over 25 years of design experience and fine arts practice. I’m an educator, explorer and autodidact — and a left handed Scorpio — who sees the world differently.
During my MFA studies at Parsons School of Design in New York, I was frustrated with traditional color theory and tools, and I wanted to find a better, more intuitive way to work with color on the computer; I desired to create a more fluid way for digital artists to work with color and develop methods closer to the way painters work with color. I found it, and used it to create Colormxr and Interactive Color Creation — the methods of RGB+CMY colormixing.
The Alchemy of Color is an investigation into the mysteries of color, following red threads through history across the parallel worlds of art, science and human perception, and the tools, practices and traditions we’ve inherited from each. The first arc, Everything You Don’t Know About Color, explores where conventional wisdom about color has impacted color usage in art + design, shining a light in the darkness to help people discover how to create confidently with color.
Historically, alchemists acquired knowledge as a means of transformation. The aim of the Alchemy of Color is the same, to pursue the hidden power of color, so that we may watch it shine. Excelsior!
