Normalcy, Bob Ross, and Color Unblindness
Mobile:
The Classic in Palm Desert
On normal
“But I don’t fit in,” cried green sparrow.
“Why would you want to?” asked red fox.
Thoughts while making
His words like ancient spells, against his easel a brush slapping drums; from imagination to color, color to canvas, worlds born before our eyes.
“Alizarin Crimson and Indian Yellow,” he’d chant.
“Phthalo Green and Prussian Blue,” he’d whisper.
“Titanium White and Midnight Black,” he’d roll upon his palette knife.
“Dark Sienna and Van Dyke Brown,” he’d secret under his breath, a script liner in hand drawing forth happy little trees from primordial seas of Cadmium Yellow and Sap Green, Phthalo Blues and Bright Reds.
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, you are color blind when “you are unable to see colors in a *normal* way.”
The American Optometric Association calls it “color deficiency.”
Is one deficient when they see things differently?
The client who commissioned this mobile is “color blind,” yet helped me to see color in an entirely new way.
On my own, I would’ve never chosen Molotow Belton paints in Linda’s Sunset, Grapefruit, Kiwi, Lagoon Blue, Cadmium Yellow, Fuchsia Pink, Shock Blue, and Shock Blue Light for this mobile.
Clearly, my so-called normal way of seeing colors was blind to possibility.
How often do we read difference as division and division as deficient? When does normal become better and better become blindness?
As Bob Ross said, “Each one of us will see nature through different eyes, and that’s the way you should paint; just the way you see it.”
What’s your favorite color?
