Questioning the ideas

Introducing Chapter 2

Chapter 1 of my book “Painting with Light and Colour” told of the dogmas of Professor Bohusz-Szyszko and his claim that they were “all you need to know about painting”. It also praised their value as a practical guide.

Chapter 2 is about doubts that arose concerning their theoretical basis. It was the experience of living with these that prepared me for a critical moment in my life. This came several years later while I was reading an article in the Scientific American that had been brought to my attention by one of my colleagues in the Psychology Department at the University of Stirling. The purpose of the article was to present what the author, Edwin Land, fervently believed to be a mould-breaking understanding of the neural computations used by the eye/brain to produce the phenomenon of “colour constancy”. Actually Gaspard Monge, a French mathematician, had beaten him to the post by nearly two hundred years. But this did not stop the contents of Land’s article from being the catalyst to the evaporation of my worries. More importantly, my efforts to better understand the significance of Land’s ideas were eventually to open the way for cooperations with colleagues in the The University of Stirling Vision Group (see link below*). Without their help, few of the new insights relating to the use of colour in paintings that can be found in my book would have materialised.

But this is jumping the gun. First click on the link below to access the chapter on the doubts that had haunted me and on the process of questioning they set in motion. Its function is to explain why there is a need for the new ways of thinking and doing that play such an important part in the chapters that follow.

 

CHAPTER 2 : “DOUBTS”

 

questioning
The multicoloured display used for the cover of the “Scientific American”, in which can be found Edwin Land’s  definitive demonstrations of the phenomenon colour constancy.

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* Above and in many places in my books, I acknowledge the importance of the role of colleagues in the development of the new science-based ideas put forward in them. As well as acknowledging the help of various individual scientists at the University of Stirling,  I call attention to the role played by the University of Stirling Vision Group. For more on this please click here to access the Post I have written on its personnel and its activities.

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Posts relating to other chapters from “Painting with Light and Colour”:

Other Posts on light and colour in painting:

List of all Posts so far 

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