Butterfly Vision

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

33 Little Girls Chasing Butterflies 1958 Max Ernst (fair use)

We often wonder what it is like for our studio dogs to miss out on seeing all of the colors that we are able to see. Our third cone allows us to see not only the red in the rainbow, but also every other glorious combination of scarlet, rose, pink, orange and violet. Painting would be a very limited occupation if we only saw the world through a dog’s eye! Dogs’ dichromatic color perception (two cones only) limits them to blues and yellows. It is similar to the vision of people with red-green color blindness.

Now, let’s consider the vision of the bees and the butterflies. They are the Olympic champions of color vision. Bees and butterflies have five or more color receptor cones allowing their range of vision to extend into the ultraviolet. We humans and especially artists are continually inspired, even awed by, the beauty and grace of flowers. But we don’t really see them fully, because we can’t. Many of the…