The Colorblind Painter, Essay Example

How did his adversity elicit a talent for painting that he otherwise not has known?

After 65 years of living a normal healthy life Mr. .I has a minor accident and as abrupt as the accident it is discovered that his ability to see color is gone. Neither a slow deterioration nor a sudden disease simply one minute he has it the next it is gone. The remarkable thing that jumps at the reader is that it the entire spectrum of light and being let with black and white. To add insult to injury he is an artist. However there is something of a plus side, “my vision became that of an eagle- I can see a worm wiggle from a block away. The sharpness of focus is incredible.”(Sacks, p.3)

The loss of color perception had an adverse effect on his vision of his work. He looked at his work afresh and found them to be, “dirty.”(Sacks, p.7) In his attempt to get back to work the work he produced were tonally correct but in terms of color completely wrong. “The pictures were unintelligible a confusing welter of colors to normal eye.” (Sacks, p.12) It is only when he resigned himself to his fate is when he began to see the world a new and his paintings were now in black and white this perceptional shift produced a talent of painting he would have never know had it not been for this new perception. “The sun rose like a bomb like an enormous nuclear explosion” (Sacks, p.14)

He began with this sun rise and named the painting Nuclear Sunrise. Most artist perceive color and this is one of the most important things in art. By accepting his predicament and working with what he had it yield new and different results. An example of this is when he was asked to arrange yarn of various colors. He arranged them on a grey scale. Nothing was the way we would perceive it even the color white was not really white but had been sullied. This in itself is a metaphor of the world he was living in. “His painting though black and white reflected this sullied world. There was an extraordinary shattered, kaleidoscopic surface, with abstract shapes suggestive of faces- averted, shadowed, sorrowing, raging- and dismembered body parts, faceted and held in frames and boxes.”(Sacks, p.12)

When Mr. I got over his predicament it meant that in order to work he had to look for new things to do that was within his scope that did not require color. This turned him to an artistic child who was in the mode of discovery. The work evolved, “living themes, he had not touched in thirty years, back to representational paintings of dancers and racehorses. These paintings, even though still in black and white were full of movement, vitality, and sensuousness.” (Sacks, p.12)

He even took to sculpture that he had never attempted before. As time elapsed he began to become a night person. This also had a profound effect on his work. The full glare of the day was troublesome to him. After further consultation he got a pair of dark green glasses that did nothing to bring back his color vision but helped in his distinction of the greys he saw. “The new glasses delighted him, even though they did nothing to restore his lost vision, they did seem to noticeable to enhance his contrast vision and his perception of form and boundaries.”(Sacks, p.32) This had an effect on his art in that he could make more clear distinctions. His greys had sharped while once red and green both looked black they were now distinguished in tone at least.

In conclusion the loss of color perception was a traumatic experience for Mr. I it brought a fresh new insight to him as an artist. He was now capable of exploring new themes he had not touched on in thirty years. Not only had that he brought a new insight to what would have otherwise well exhausted objects and themes. He now looked at shape, form and tone more than ever before. “In terms of his painting, after a year or more of experiment and uncertainty, Mr. L has moved into a strong and productive phase, as strong and productive as anything in his long artistic career.”(Sacks, p.39)

References:

Oliver Sacks An Anthropologist on Mars “The case of The Colorblind Painter” p. 1-41 .Retrieved from http://imaginingthebrain.jgallant.org/secure2/colorblindpainter.pdf 3/7/2012