Seeing Red

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Birthday Bouquet Oil Ann Trusty

“The last mad throb of red just as it turns green; the ultimate shriek of orange calling all the blues of heaven for relief and support . . . each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow.”
- Charles Demuth

As painters, we are intimately involved with the act of representing the effects of light on the world around us. Ann and I first learned about the science of light in a course called “Physics for Artists” in college. The physical properties of the electromagnetic radiation that we call light are well-quantified and measured in wavelengths, called Angstroms. Visible light (to humans) occupies a range between 3800 to 7500 Angstroms. (One Angstrom equals .00000001 centimeter.) Red is the longest wavelength, 6200 to 7500 A, and so has a low frequency, (think: long and steady), which makes it very vi…