"When you go out to paint try to forget what object you have before you—a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think, here is a little streak of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it emerges as your own naive impression of the scene before you. I would like to paint the way a bird sings."
Color is the visual perception produced by the activation of the different types of cone cells in the eye caused by light. Though color is not an inherent property of matter, color perception is related to an object's light absorption, emission, reflection and transmission. For most humans, visible wavelengths of light are the ones perceived in the visible light spectrum, with three types of cone
"[S]timuli above adaptation reflectance are tinged with the hue of the illuminant, stimuli below adaptation levels are tinged with the afterimage complementary to the hue of the illuminant, and stimuli at or near adaptation reflectance are either achromatic or weakly saturated color of uncertain hue."
Colors"Colour has a logic as exact as that of form. One must not give up before capturing that first impression."
Colors"There, for the price of just two sous, I found crépons and rice papers in astonishing colours. I covered the walls of my room with these naïve and gaudy pictures. ...It was not until much later that I became aware of the beauty of the great Japanese masters, more subdued by far, yet less elucidating in terms of pure colour."
Colors"Color is that aspect of the appearance of objects and lights which depends upon the spectral composition of the reaching the of the eye and upon its temporal and spatial distribution thereon."
Colors"When Michael saw this host, he first grew pale, As angels can; next like Italian twilight, He turned all colours—as a peacocks tail, Or sunset streaming through a Gothic Skylight In some old abbey, or a trout not stale, Or distant lightning on the horizon by night Or a fresh rainbow, or a grand review Of thirty regiments in red, green, and blue."
Colors"...I am always between two currents of thought, first the material difficulties, turning round and round to make a living; and second, study of color. I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a sombre background. To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is nothing in that of stereoscopic realism, but is it not some thing that actually exists?"
Colors