okay guys thanks so much for having me
and the name of this talk is called
colorblind your skin is green so we have
this idea that seeing is believing
perhaps and one notion about creative
people that I’d like to challenge
tonight is that creative people of a
once you see things that aren’t there
that the Tim Burton’s of the world the
folks that see Pixies that see dragons
that see ghosts but what I’d like to
suggest instead is that creative people
and creative thinking might actually
help us see things more vividly and more
clearly so I think one thing that tends
to happen to us as we get older is that
our brains kind of become hijacked by
everyday routines and I usually point to
around fourth grade or so is that period
where we start becoming a little bit
more self-conscious about what our
friends think and might be a little bit
more comfortable just deferring from
activity so every teachers challenge I
think sometimes is dealing with students
that say oh I can’t do this I can’t do
that you know in other words perhaps not
willing to try or too afraid to try but
it seems that we get a particular a
particularly strong reaction when it
comes to the arts for example if we ask
people are you an artist for instance
over and over again it’s almost like
asking someone if they’ve robbed a bank
or done something horrible they say oh
no no you know not me you know my
brother’s an artist you know my aunt you
know she likes to draw I don’t have a
creative bone in my body but then it you
know they don’t want to sound in your
insulin yeah you know I go to museums
sometimes so I guess if that’s your
reaction I would just you know sort of
challenge you to open your mind that’s
really what our teaching is it’s a judo
trick really to try to flip people’s
minds to accept new things I want to try
a little bit of an exercise here I’d
like everyone in the audience if they
would for a moment to think of a dinner
plate okay so once you think of a dinner
plate now can we see a quick show of
hands how many folks have thought of a
white dinner plate
dinner plate okay that’s a lot of hands
okay so from what I could see in here
the the lights are in my eyes but it
seems like a lot of hands went up okay
now I want to try something else okay
I want you guys to think about the last
sporting event the last concert that you
went to last time you were in an arena
okay and I want you to think of an
adjective to describe the size of that
place so you walk into a stadium right
and the stadium is okay so think about a
word okay so how many folks said large
okay see some largest huge big enormous
gigantic all right so it seems like we
have a very large verbal vocabulary
right but often times our visual
vocabulary can be limited we tend to
kind of reduce it to one a prototype and
that’s certainly something that we can
expand upon okay so now it’s time for
the heart of of our matter and that’s to
talk a little bit about color okay so on
three guys okay grass is grass is green
okay so grass is green okay so let’s
take a look at that if we could for a
moment I don’t know with st. Patrick’s
Day approaching how many folks thought
of that leprechaun green perhaps four
grass well we look at an actual sample
of grass actually I don’t know where
well Prem Roo as I saw him hiding around
here at some point this is his photo in
here well we see that there’s actually
very few greens so even in the
springtime on the grass a little bit
more vibrant that it is now we’re gonna
see olive tones will see purples we’ll
see golden colors but we’re actually not
gonna see too many greens in fact in
this photograph areas that I could swear
were green the fringes of the trees
those are actually sort of a purplish
green a dark dark I don’t know if you
it’s the farc the color on the far right
so I don’t doubt that that’s the green
that people thought of one thing that I
frequently have to refresh with my art
classes when they come in is the Sesame
Street topic of primary colors you know
and from there the secondary colors
complementary colors so hopefully this
is a nice cheat sheet of the color chart
for you but in some ways the basic color
wheel
just do us a disservice if we kind of
limit it to the conventional color wheel
that we see on the left for example just
mixing colors with whites muted colors
you see that there’s an array of
possibilities and it doesn’t stop there
B we could mix colors over blacks over
grays over opposite colors colors really
do some phenomenal things when you’re
using wet media so bleeding techniques
like watercolor we see all kinds of
color possibilities there layering
colors on top of each other in fact
there’s so many color mixing
opportunities and it’s just so vast that
I think that’s one reason you might be
familiar with a sort of stereotypical
messy artist palette at a certain point
it’s almost more intuitive to mix colors
in the manner that you see on the
palette on the left intuitively for
those of you guys that were around back
in the 60s
you might remember that the peach crayon
was initially called the flesh crayon
and then Crayola you know thoughtfully
responded to the fact that they had a
diverse audience who liked to use their
crayons and so they made more skin tones
and they also changed the flash color it
became known as peach but there’s some
problems with that if we look at the
peaches off to the right that we’re done
with color pencils so almost like a
crayon in there I mean you’ll see that
there’s quite a variety of colors so
there’s really no way that that peach
could be you know selected and sort of
accurately describe a peach and it
certainly couldn’t describe a skin
either one experience that I had when I
walked into museum when I was younger
and we went and were checking out some
of the early Renaissance work you know a
lot of it’s a little bit creepy you know
you have these gone figures one thing
that was sort of surreal about it as I
remember seeing a green madonna and
child and I later realized I was
explained to me by a professor that it
was actually the paints on the surface
that were appealing off so the green
with the green undertone so there’s cool
undertones underneath representing the
unoxidized blood underneath the skin so
your skin actually is green the Mona
Lisa
world’s most famous painting in many
respects but famous for a reason you
might not know Leonardo da Vinci
actually used 40 glazes so 40 thin
glazes that he many of them he actually
invented himself but he painstakingly
layered them on top and that’s why he
gets a soft texture of the skin and it’s
also how he gets that mysterious
atmosphere in back so certainly no
singular crayon would have done there
though
Impressionists for example like Renoir
they were actually initially despised
for making work that wasn’t finished
that wasn’t layered quite in the same
way for revealing those colors
underneath but since then you walk into
a museum those become I think one of our
favorite rooms often times in the most
popular rooms to walk into just for the
beauty of the colors that we see in
there so we’re talking about skin and
color I can’t help but pause and I’ll
point out the strange phenomenon that we
have as human beings this idea of
labeling in terms of skin especially an
idea of for instance black and white you
guys are sitting in the black box right
now if you were to use the color sampler
that’s the tool in Photoshop that you
could sample pixels and you would not
see any black for instance in this
entire room so true black almost never
occurs in nature the snow that was
falling today if you were sample that
with the sampler you’re not really gonna
see any white and there either so when
we think of the term racism for those of
us who haven’t been on the receiving end
maybe just seems like a word but I want
to challenge the audience to do
something for a second and I want you to
think about that term to feel that term
as much as you can and I want you to
think about every single act of racism
in history every single act of
discrimination humiliation brutality
bigotry the worst possible crime slavery
murder crime just to unspeakable to
imagine just millions of Tears tremors
torments just live shattered over what
justified by what by this strange
concept of of skin color the strange
artifact artificial construct of skin
color so that um for me has hit home
more recently my wife is in the audience
right now along with our adoptive son is
here and he’s been with us since he’s
been a baby and one interesting thing is
when we go to fill out forms when we’re
at either the doctor’s office or we’re
filling out legal forms we’re asked to
check off an ethnicity and the awkward
thing that we’ve had to explain over and
over again is we don’t know and it’s
it’s also strange because you know it
makes a little sense to me friends
neighbors strangers come up they are
taken by how handsome he is and
invariably they like to start guessing
what his origin is and it is a little
interesting that people are so
preoccupied with it i I do doubt you
know if he was identified for example as
Caucasian that there’d be the same like
oh is he Slavic or Scandinavian I just
have to know you know so but but you
know I’ve heard guesses
you know Central American Indian or no
he must be from the South Pacific maybe
he’s you know Mimi’s Asian and there’s
also a lot of a fascination out of the
possibility he might be black we don’t
know some quadrants from mixed family my
mixed family this is actually coming
from from my son and I standing next to
each other in the same photograph and I
don’t want to back up and just say my
typical response by the way when people
ask would they say well what is he I
typically say well he’s a toddler now
that he started to walk he was a baby
before that and then they go no you know
what but where is he from
and I say Massachusetts which is true
and again I’m not trying to be flippant
with that answer and I don’t want to you
know undermine a cultural heritage
but again it’s a sort of fascination I
think with with skin color that we’re
interested in and so that’s why I wanted
to put my skin color up next to his skin
color we’re both standing next to each
other and I sample three areas I sampled
highlights mid-tones and darks the
purple actually represents our
fingernails we weren’t wearing nail
polish that’s I sampled it several times
just to just to be sure of that but the
darker one is actually mine you know
people use the term color blind in a
positive way to mean to look beyond skin
color however I’m very aware of color as
an artist if you’re taking a watercolor
class the tree shimmer with color the
people around you dance with color and
if someone ever asks or if if my son
ever asks what am I the answer so simple
you’re my son I think that art and being
a parent both share in common that they
revealed a world of beauty to me that I
would not have known existed otherwise
thank you
[Applause]
and the name of this talk is called
colorblind your skin is green so we have
this idea that seeing is believing
perhaps and one notion about creative
people that I’d like to challenge
tonight is that creative people of a
once you see things that aren’t there
that the Tim Burton’s of the world the
folks that see Pixies that see dragons
that see ghosts but what I’d like to
suggest instead is that creative people
and creative thinking might actually
help us see things more vividly and more
clearly so I think one thing that tends
to happen to us as we get older is that
our brains kind of become hijacked by
everyday routines and I usually point to
around fourth grade or so is that period
where we start becoming a little bit
more self-conscious about what our
friends think and might be a little bit
more comfortable just deferring from
activity so every teachers challenge I
think sometimes is dealing with students
that say oh I can’t do this I can’t do
that you know in other words perhaps not
willing to try or too afraid to try but
it seems that we get a particular a
particularly strong reaction when it
comes to the arts for example if we ask
people are you an artist for instance
over and over again it’s almost like
asking someone if they’ve robbed a bank
or done something horrible they say oh
no no you know not me you know my
brother’s an artist you know my aunt you
know she likes to draw I don’t have a
creative bone in my body but then it you
know they don’t want to sound in your
insulin yeah you know I go to museums
sometimes so I guess if that’s your
reaction I would just you know sort of
challenge you to open your mind that’s
really what our teaching is it’s a judo
trick really to try to flip people’s
minds to accept new things I want to try
a little bit of an exercise here I’d
like everyone in the audience if they
would for a moment to think of a dinner
plate okay so once you think of a dinner
plate now can we see a quick show of
hands how many folks have thought of a
white dinner plate
dinner plate okay that’s a lot of hands
okay so from what I could see in here
the the lights are in my eyes but it
seems like a lot of hands went up okay
now I want to try something else okay
I want you guys to think about the last
sporting event the last concert that you
went to last time you were in an arena
okay and I want you to think of an
adjective to describe the size of that
place so you walk into a stadium right
and the stadium is okay so think about a
word okay so how many folks said large
okay see some largest huge big enormous
gigantic all right so it seems like we
have a very large verbal vocabulary
right but often times our visual
vocabulary can be limited we tend to
kind of reduce it to one a prototype and
that’s certainly something that we can
expand upon okay so now it’s time for
the heart of of our matter and that’s to
talk a little bit about color okay so on
three guys okay grass is grass is green
okay so grass is green okay so let’s
take a look at that if we could for a
moment I don’t know with st. Patrick’s
Day approaching how many folks thought
of that leprechaun green perhaps four
grass well we look at an actual sample
of grass actually I don’t know where
well Prem Roo as I saw him hiding around
here at some point this is his photo in
here well we see that there’s actually
very few greens so even in the
springtime on the grass a little bit
more vibrant that it is now we’re gonna
see olive tones will see purples we’ll
see golden colors but we’re actually not
gonna see too many greens in fact in
this photograph areas that I could swear
were green the fringes of the trees
those are actually sort of a purplish
green a dark dark I don’t know if you
it’s the farc the color on the far right
so I don’t doubt that that’s the green
that people thought of one thing that I
frequently have to refresh with my art
classes when they come in is the Sesame
Street topic of primary colors you know
and from there the secondary colors
complementary colors so hopefully this
is a nice cheat sheet of the color chart
for you but in some ways the basic color
wheel
just do us a disservice if we kind of
limit it to the conventional color wheel
that we see on the left for example just
mixing colors with whites muted colors
you see that there’s an array of
possibilities and it doesn’t stop there
B we could mix colors over blacks over
grays over opposite colors colors really
do some phenomenal things when you’re
using wet media so bleeding techniques
like watercolor we see all kinds of
color possibilities there layering
colors on top of each other in fact
there’s so many color mixing
opportunities and it’s just so vast that
I think that’s one reason you might be
familiar with a sort of stereotypical
messy artist palette at a certain point
it’s almost more intuitive to mix colors
in the manner that you see on the
palette on the left intuitively for
those of you guys that were around back
in the 60s
you might remember that the peach crayon
was initially called the flesh crayon
and then Crayola you know thoughtfully
responded to the fact that they had a
diverse audience who liked to use their
crayons and so they made more skin tones
and they also changed the flash color it
became known as peach but there’s some
problems with that if we look at the
peaches off to the right that we’re done
with color pencils so almost like a
crayon in there I mean you’ll see that
there’s quite a variety of colors so
there’s really no way that that peach
could be you know selected and sort of
accurately describe a peach and it
certainly couldn’t describe a skin
either one experience that I had when I
walked into museum when I was younger
and we went and were checking out some
of the early Renaissance work you know a
lot of it’s a little bit creepy you know
you have these gone figures one thing
that was sort of surreal about it as I
remember seeing a green madonna and
child and I later realized I was
explained to me by a professor that it
was actually the paints on the surface
that were appealing off so the green
with the green undertone so there’s cool
undertones underneath representing the
unoxidized blood underneath the skin so
your skin actually is green the Mona
Lisa
world’s most famous painting in many
respects but famous for a reason you
might not know Leonardo da Vinci
actually used 40 glazes so 40 thin
glazes that he many of them he actually
invented himself but he painstakingly
layered them on top and that’s why he
gets a soft texture of the skin and it’s
also how he gets that mysterious
atmosphere in back so certainly no
singular crayon would have done there
though
Impressionists for example like Renoir
they were actually initially despised
for making work that wasn’t finished
that wasn’t layered quite in the same
way for revealing those colors
underneath but since then you walk into
a museum those become I think one of our
favorite rooms often times in the most
popular rooms to walk into just for the
beauty of the colors that we see in
there so we’re talking about skin and
color I can’t help but pause and I’ll
point out the strange phenomenon that we
have as human beings this idea of
labeling in terms of skin especially an
idea of for instance black and white you
guys are sitting in the black box right
now if you were to use the color sampler
that’s the tool in Photoshop that you
could sample pixels and you would not
see any black for instance in this
entire room so true black almost never
occurs in nature the snow that was
falling today if you were sample that
with the sampler you’re not really gonna
see any white and there either so when
we think of the term racism for those of
us who haven’t been on the receiving end
maybe just seems like a word but I want
to challenge the audience to do
something for a second and I want you to
think about that term to feel that term
as much as you can and I want you to
think about every single act of racism
in history every single act of
discrimination humiliation brutality
bigotry the worst possible crime slavery
murder crime just to unspeakable to
imagine just millions of Tears tremors
torments just live shattered over what
justified by what by this strange
concept of of skin color the strange
artifact artificial construct of skin
color so that um for me has hit home
more recently my wife is in the audience
right now along with our adoptive son is
here and he’s been with us since he’s
been a baby and one interesting thing is
when we go to fill out forms when we’re
at either the doctor’s office or we’re
filling out legal forms we’re asked to
check off an ethnicity and the awkward
thing that we’ve had to explain over and
over again is we don’t know and it’s
it’s also strange because you know it
makes a little sense to me friends
neighbors strangers come up they are
taken by how handsome he is and
invariably they like to start guessing
what his origin is and it is a little
interesting that people are so
preoccupied with it i I do doubt you
know if he was identified for example as
Caucasian that there’d be the same like
oh is he Slavic or Scandinavian I just
have to know you know so but but you
know I’ve heard guesses
you know Central American Indian or no
he must be from the South Pacific maybe
he’s you know Mimi’s Asian and there’s
also a lot of a fascination out of the
possibility he might be black we don’t
know some quadrants from mixed family my
mixed family this is actually coming
from from my son and I standing next to
each other in the same photograph and I
don’t want to back up and just say my
typical response by the way when people
ask would they say well what is he I
typically say well he’s a toddler now
that he started to walk he was a baby
before that and then they go no you know
what but where is he from
and I say Massachusetts which is true
and again I’m not trying to be flippant
with that answer and I don’t want to you
know undermine a cultural heritage
but again it’s a sort of fascination I
think with with skin color that we’re
interested in and so that’s why I wanted
to put my skin color up next to his skin
color we’re both standing next to each
other and I sample three areas I sampled
highlights mid-tones and darks the
purple actually represents our
fingernails we weren’t wearing nail
polish that’s I sampled it several times
just to just to be sure of that but the
darker one is actually mine you know
people use the term color blind in a
positive way to mean to look beyond skin
color however I’m very aware of color as
an artist if you’re taking a watercolor
class the tree shimmer with color the
people around you dance with color and
if someone ever asks or if if my son
ever asks what am I the answer so simple
you’re my son I think that art and being
a parent both share in common that they
revealed a world of beauty to me that I
would not have known existed otherwise
thank you
[Applause]
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