The Colorblind Artist

At this year's Rencontres des Arts, I had a lot of conversations with visitors about my work. And again I was reminded that often people are fascinated by one particular detail: I am colorblind.

The truth is that my journey as an artist began before I knew I was colorblind.

As a child, I loved drawing. Later, I fell in love with painting. I was captivated by color, by light and contrast, by the way that colors play of each other, by the emotional power that colors create together on a canvas. I explored, experimented, and immersed myself in the world of colors without ever questioning whether I was seeing colors the "right" way.

Only later did I discover that I was colorblind.

By then, as I often tell people, the damage was done.

I was already hopelessly in love with painting.

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had learned about my colorblindness first. If someone had sat me down and explained the limitations before I had ever picked up a paintbrush, would logic have convinced me to pursue something else? Would I have decided that painting was an impractical path?

Perhaps.

But that is not how my story unfolded.

Instead, I fell in love with color before I knew that I perceive colors differently.

And for that, I am grateful.

Being colorblind has certainly presented challenges. Then and now, though less often now. I have had to develop my own ways of understanding color relationships, value, contrast, and harmony from a starting point that is unlike what is deemed normal.

But, at the same time, like every artist, I have simply had to learn how to work with both my strengths and my limitations.

And in that journey I have come to know a truth that is obvious once realized: Art has never been about seeing the world exactly as everyone else sees it.

Art is about translating personal experience into something universally meaningful.

And so, I do not paint in spite of being colorblind. Nor because of it.

I paint because I love painting.