Optical Illusions and our Perception of Color

A fun and mind-boggling TED Talk,  that will interest anyone who thinks they can see color- especially artists and synesthetes!

“Color enables us to see the similarities and differences between surfaces, according to the full spectrum of light that they reflect. But what you’ve just done is, in many respects, mathematically impossible. Why? Because, as Berkeley tells us, we have no direct access to our physical world, other than through our senses. And the light that falls onto our eyes is determined by multiple things in the world — not only the color of objects, but also the color of their illumination, and the color of the space between us and those objects. You vary any one of those parameters, and you’ll change the color of the light that falls onto your eye.

This is a huge problem because it means that the same image could have an infinite number of possible real-world sources.”

“Color tells us… that the brain didn’t actually evolve to see the world the way it is. We can’t. Instead, the brain evolved to see the world the way it was useful to see in the past. And how we see is by continually redefining normality.”

Creativity & Confidence

  “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize”

– Robert Hughes

“…meeting Bandura was really cathartic for me because I realized that this famous scientist had documented and scientifically validated something that we’ve seen happen for the last 30 years. That we could take people who had the fear that they weren’t creative, and we could take them through a series of steps, kind of like a series of small successes, and they turn fear into familiarity, and they surprise themselves. That transformation is amazing.” David Kelley

Nonverbal Language, Art Therapy, and Georgia O’Keeffe

Hands, 1918 Alfred Stieglitz

Georgia O’Keeffe, ca. 1920 Alfred Stieglitz

Special No. 16, 1918 Georgia O’Keeffe

Red Mesa, 1917 Georgia O’Keeffe

Series I, No. 4, 1918 Georgia O’Keeffe

Evening Star No. IV, 1917 Georgia O’Keeffe

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.”

-Georgia O’Keeffe

This quote aptly and unintentionally sums up the basis of art therapy. Art is not only a language that does not depend on words, but it is a language is used to communicate metaverbally (or “beyond words,” according to Bruce Moon). Through creating art and reflecting on the process and/or product, people can increase self awareness, cope with symptoms, relieve stress, enhance their cognitive abilities, experience pleasure, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, increase self esteem, and more. In art therapy, the creative process of art making is used to improve and enhance the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of any and all individuals.

The process of creating and the artwork itself can help us understand ourselves and allow us to express things that words alone cannot.

Find out more: http://www.arttherapy.org/