Chromosphere: The Color Theory Podcast

A conversation with artist, Suyao Tian exploring her process as a painter and her personal approaches to using color. Please find more information related to this episode here.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

A conversation with Jon Rieschl. Please find additional resources to this episode here.

Jon Reischl is a visual artist and designer specializing in mixed-media and oil painting. He has shown work locally in the Twin Cities and the greater metro area as well as regionally at venues throughout the Midwest. 

A graduate of St. Paul’s College of Visual Arts (RIP), He works out of Rock 9 Art Studio, located in the heart of the Creative Enterprise Zone. Jon lives on St. Paul’s East Side with his lovely wife Debra and their trusty beagle.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Sebastián Wilson is a photographer living in Santiago, Chile. He studied architecture which has a clear influence on his work both on the graphic sense, and on the way he observes and portrays light. For links and resources related to this episode, please see the Chromosphere episode webpage.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Dr. David Briggs has been teaching classes on colour for more than 20 years, and currently teaches colour, drawing and painting at the National Art School and the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.  For links and resources related to this episode, please see the Chromosphere episode webpage.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

I interview painter Jeremy Szopinski who is a good friend and longtime studio mate. For more information about the podcast and Jeremy's artworks, check out this website link.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

The final episode of Season 2; includes a correction to the Mary Gartside episode from Season 1. The first version of this episode erroneously stated a connection between Mary Gartside and the writing of Johann von Goethe. This new episode was recorded as a correction and published on April 24, 2023.

Mary Gartside was a painter, teacher, and color theorist who lived in England from 1755-1819. More information about Gartside can be found at: The Winterthur Museum's Program in American Material Culture, Sussex Research Online, and Medium.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Part one of a reading of an essay I am writing, Focal Points and the Roots of Abstraction.

Human color vision adapts to the changing environment in many ways. Pupils dilate and constrict in order to regulate the amount of light entering the eye. The lens either bunches up or flattens out to change its shape while focusing light wavelengths along the spectral band at different proximities to the retina. Cone cells, and other light sensitive cells, perform plus-or-minus gains in activity to achieve what is known as color constancy, allowing humans to maintain a persistent perception of colors within changing light sources. Adaptations such as these take place at different rates of time, some more quickly than others; some more involuntarily than others, which may relate to how focal points form and dissipate within a visual field. This essay explores how adaptations of the visual system may generate focal points, and how representing light as colors informed the roots of abstraction.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Are nearly all the cars and trucks in your area either red, white, gray, or black? Discussion of red colors pairing to neutral colors as a color scheme.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

A review of a listener letter.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

A walk through the grocery store in search of the analogous split-complementary color scheme as well as other palettes.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Part 3 of 3: The final installment, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. 

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Part 2 of 3. In this episode, I read the middle portion of an essay I have written, which could become a chapter in a future publication.  (Read in three parts.)

Abstract:
This essay charts how the term harmony came to be used by European and North American artists, designers, and educators as a qualitative descriptor of color usage and design. Originating in metaphysics and philosophy in BCE Greece as a method to link the functioning of the five senses, including color vision, the concept entered into the vernacular of design via architecture during the Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, theorists and educators claimed the authority to define objective harmonies in color usage and design; forming methodologies that have been ubiquitous in practice over the past 100 years. 

The final section of the essay, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. 

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Part 1 of 3. In this episode, I read the beginning of an essay I have written, which could become a chapter in a future publication.  (Read in three parts.)

Abstract:
This essay charts how the term harmony came to be used by European and North American artists, designers, and educators as a qualitative descriptor of color usage and design. Originating in metaphysics and philosophy in BCE Greece as a method to link the functioning of the five senses, including color vision, the concept entered into the vernacular of design via architecture during the Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, theorists and educators claimed the authority to define objective harmonies in color usage and design; forming methodologies that have been ubiquitous in practice over the past 100 years. 

The final section of the essay, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. 

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Welcome to Season 2! 
This episode features a correction on the first episode of Season 1, followed by the continued investigation of how red, yellow, and blue became known widely as primary colors.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

The final episode of Season 1. I explore whether or not there are more variations of color within the hue of green; more than those of the other hue color families. Thank you for listening to Season 1!

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Discussion of the impact of telescopes on the development of color theory.  Also linear & aerial perspective in relation to depth and space, and what any of that has to do with the newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Discussion of the work of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel and her book, Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color, of 1903. Discussion centers on where I see her concepts in relation to those of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Discussion of additive spectral color mixing and how our perception of purple may be the result of our minds experiencing a negative green. 

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Discussion of how afterimages occur when the cones of the retina tire and weaken due to overstimulation, allowing other cones to briefly play a more dominant role in vision, and how that lead to the establishment of complementary colors.

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.

Discussion of Arthur Schopenhauer and Phillip Otto Runge's ideas about color vision and color harmonies, and how they may have impacted the teaching of color theory at the Bauhaus art school, in Germany in the early 20th Century.  

Please find more information to each episode on the Chromosphere website.