Seeing the world through violet-coloured glasses

 

We've really come full circle now, with almost as many questions about the colour violet as with the earlier colour indigo. What does violet really look like?  Like lavender? Lilac? Mauve? Amethyst? Burgundy?

 

This portion of the fresco unearthed in Pompeii's Villa of the Mysteries  offers a range of possibilities.

 

Less complicated, this example of the colour field paintings of 20^th c. artist Mark Rothko offers a simpler choice.

 

Going back to Square One, I'm going to invoke Sir Isaac Newton, who devised the colour wheel as a way to visualize the sequence and relationships of colours in the spectrum.

 

Then, two centuries later, there's Johannes Itten who spent just as much time and effort, splashing among the colours and formulating exercises and structures to frame them.

 

Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall – or maybe a purple ground beetle outside the window – if these two colour theorists could be brought together?

 

Well, that's what I decided to do for the final piece in the Spectral Creatures series – borrow some violet tones (leaning towards red-violet) and put Isaac and Johannes in their midst.  The preliminary layout:

 

The first layers of colour:--

 

And the final painting:  "The Theoreticians" – Spectral Series, copyright 2026.

 

What a somber twosome!  In contrast, let's find some joyously beautiful violet spin-offs from master artists.  Just in time for the start of this series, my friend Y sent me a beautiful Hungarian postage stamp with a painting titled, "Lady in Purple" by fascinating early 20^th c. artist Pal Szinyei Merse. 

 

And who can resist Matisse's "Woman in a Violet Coat"?

 

This series has had its ups and downs (greys and whites?) but it's been rewarding for the time I've spent focussed on colour choices and colour mixing.  With a pat on the back to all who have stuck with me, let me quote John Ruskin:-- 

 

"The purest and most thoughtful minds are

 those which love colour the most."

 

How colour meets the eye

 

A neighbour's grey weathered back yard tent doesn't look like much.  But – what if?  Just imagine if it were a lovely medium shade of lavender.  Since my right-eye cataract surgery late last month, I haven't needed to imagine – that's just how it appears to my right eye!  (As a sidebar, individuals can perceive colours differently, and here's an interesting synopsis on that subject).

 

As my "Spectral" series is rounding another bend in the colour wheel, I've given hours of thought to just what's happening between red and blue.  Not a day goes by that I don't see another example of purplish hues.  Even right outside my eye doctor's office!

 

Yet Sir Isaac Newton's colour wheel, as it's come down to us, has no purple.  As introduced in my Grade 7 science class, its seven colours make the acronym "Roy G. Biv".   Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet.

 

Here we are at indigo, and I ask:  What colour IS that, anyway?  Take a look at the cover of educator Betty Edwards' very useful book:

 

…and at my long-ago exercise, suggested by another source:-- Assigning paint pigment samples to their places on the wheel.  (Did you notice that RED is sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right?  That's a hot debate I don't want to know about).

 

Okay.  I'm going to translate "indigo" as the blue-purple hue that Crayola added to its crayon choices in its expanded mid-1950s box (another childhood gift that I remember!)  This article validates this view.

 

And we're off, with this early stage:

 

Oh, sigh.  The research had been more fun than the production, and I was finding this all a bit boring.  But my deadline was closing in so I simply put a face in the midst and called it a day:  "Indigo Unveiled" (Spectral Series, copyright 2026)

 

Then I went searching for a known artist's work in the same colour and, very coincidentally, found this face by Edward Burne-Jones. 

In a deeper tone, here's a figure in a rich blue-purple dress by artist Kees van Dongen. 

 

Let's end this exploration of the colour indigo with a salute to artist Louise Bourgeois who said:

"Art is a way of recognizing one's self."