In 1913 an obscure Eastern European painter named Rudolf Laban declared he was giving up painting to become a dancer. I’m reversing Laban’s career path, yet I find the study of painting to be curiously similar to the study of movement.
Like the Impressionists, I’m interested in capturing the effect of light on colored objects – something almost as ephemeral as movement, especially when painting outdoors.
Just as you have to give up certain perceptual habits to really see movement, you have to break habits to really see color.
In the case of color, the perceptual habit that has to be broken is color constancy. Color constancy is the tendency to perceive an object as always being the same color, despite changes in illumination. For example, we know grass is green. Yet in bright sunlight, it actually looks yellow.
Tune out is the perceptual habit that has to be broken when observing movement. That’s because movement is ubiquitous, and our brains tend to tune out any phenomenon that is constantly present. In everyday activities, it takes conscious effort to make movement the focus of attention.
In learning to see color and capture what I see with pigment, I’m finding that my movement observation experience is relevant. Find out more in the next blogs.