Art for colour blind people
In 2025, I’m embarking on a project to recreate each painting that I make with a second version. A colour blind version.
Why I’m making art for colour blind persons.
My brother is colour blind.
He’s a genius, like a literal grandmaster at chess. But he can’t see colours like we do. We being people who see normally. But what is normal? Who is to say that my truth is your truth? That what I see is what you see?
This is the question I have been contemplating recently after I discovered that birds see more colours than humans do.
I have normal vision. But this is how I experience color blindness:
Birds have possibly the most advanced visual system of any vertebrate. For example, we have 3 kinds of colour cone cells in our retinas. Birds have four. On top of that, in each of a bird’s cone cells is a drop of coloured oil that enhances their ability of detect differences between similar colours.
And on top of that, some species of birds are sensitive to the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, which we cannot see, at all.
So when it comes to colour and birds, we are vision impaired. And that REALLY annoys me, because I want to see how birds see. I’m an artist. I’m all about colour and seeing subtle colour shifts in things. And you’re telling me that there’s more colour out there for me to see, but I can’t see it.
Yeah, that’s annoying.
But that’s what my brother goes through, everyday.
Because he can’t see red, at all. Anything red is grey. He’s what you’d call a “strong proton” or colour blind green and red. So, for example:
The amber and the red traffic lights both look grey to him.
Peanut butter looks greenish grey to him.
He can’t tell when a banana is ripe.
And potentially, everything I paint looks hideous to him.
I use colour a lot to balance a composition, to move the eye around, to create interest. But to him, there may be no interest, he may not even see what I’m trying to say in my paintings.
So I wanted to see how he sees, just like I want to see how a bird sees. So I decided this year every painting I create I will make a second version for my brother, where I balance the composition using the colours he sees. The two paintings wont appear the same to him, one will be enhanced and balanced according to his strong protan vision. Basically, I have blues, yellows and grey-ish greens to work with and I have to decide, while I’m looking at a red flower for example, how to interpret that in blue or yellow. It’s going to be an interesting challenge. But as always in art, every painting is a puzzle. And this puzzle I’m really excited to solve.
My first paintings for colour blind people:
