Chromosphere: The Color Theory Podcast

Part one of a reading of an essay I am writing, Focal Points and the Roots of Abstraction.Human color vision adapts to the changing environment in many ways. Pupils dilate and constrict in order to regulate the amount of light entering the eye. The lens either bunches up or flattens out to change its shape while focusing light wavelengths along the spectral band at different proximities to the retina. Cone cells, and other light sensitive cells, perform plus-or-minus gains in activity to achieve what is known as color constancy, allowing humans to maintain a persistent perception of colors within changing light sources. Adaptations such as these take place at different rates of time, some more quickly than others; some more involuntarily than others, which may relate to how focal points form and dissipate within a visual field. This essay explores how adaptations of the visual system may generate focal points, and how representing light as colors informed the roots of abstraction.Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Are nearly all the cars and trucks in your area either red, white, gray, or black? Discussion of red colors pairing to neutral colors as a color scheme.Send us Fan MailSupport the show

A review of a listener letter.Send us Fan MailSupport the show

A walk through the grocery store in search of the analogous split-complementary color scheme as well as other palettes.Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Part 3 of 3: The final installment, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Part 2 of 3. In this episode, I read the middle portion of an essay I have written, which could become a chapter in a future publication.  (Read in three parts.)Abstract:This essay charts how the term harmony came to be used by European and North American artists, designers, and educators as a qualitative descriptor of color usage and design. Originating in metaphysics and philosophy in BCE Greece as a method to link the functioning of the five senses, including color vision, the concept entered into the vernacular of design via architecture during the Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, theorists and educators claimed the authority to define objective harmonies in color usage and design; forming methodologies that have been ubiquitous in practice over the past 100 years. The final section of the essay, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Part 1 of 3. In this episode, I read the beginning of an essay I have written, which could become a chapter in a future publication.  (Read in three parts.)Abstract:This essay charts how the term harmony came to be used by European and North American artists, designers, and educators as a qualitative descriptor of color usage and design. Originating in metaphysics and philosophy in BCE Greece as a method to link the functioning of the five senses, including color vision, the concept entered into the vernacular of design via architecture during the Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, theorists and educators claimed the authority to define objective harmonies in color usage and design; forming methodologies that have been ubiquitous in practice over the past 100 years. The final section of the essay, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Welcome to Season 2! This episode features a correction on the first episode of Season 1, followed by the continued investigation of how red, yellow, and blue became known widely as primary colors.Send us Fan MailSupport the show

The final episode of Season 1. I explore whether or not there are more variations of color within the hue of green; more than those of the other hue color families. Thank you for listening to Season 1!Send us Fan MailSupport the show

Discussion of the impact of telescopes on the development of color theory.  Also linear & aerial perspective in relation to depth and space, and what any of that has to do with the newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope.Send us Fan MailSupport the show