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."
