The Science, Magic, and Art of Color

Color touches on nearly every aspect of life on earth. It is used to elicit the widest range of emotions and feelings by quickly influencing cellular activity or raising or lowering blood pressure or triggering wakefulness and sleep. Color plays a vital role in mating and reproduction for most life forms and a central role in symbolizing the aspirations of nation states, corporations, and even the humble neighborhood grade school. In the realm of the visual arts color has reigned supreme since the earliest cave paintings, and in the mundane material world, color is used universally to influence the buying decisions of everything from Ferraris to Fruit Loops.

A theory can be defined as a well substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment, and a mystery is defined as something that baffles our understanding and cannot be explained. Since color cannot be studied in isolation, the course will move between modern scientific color theory and the mysterious world of color interaction and application as well as an exploration of the fundamentals of two dimensional design. We will study historic and modern pigments and their uses and applications across a broad range of the visual arts and will devote substantial class time to the execution of color design problems. Class time will be divided into lecture, critique, studio exercises, and the explanation of assignments due for the following class critique.

This course is designed to challenge, encourage and enlighten all levels of artistic interest and experience from beginner to working professional.