This World, A Colourful Kaleidoscope

Sometimes my Instagram algorithm throws up the most wonderful content—away from the ‘brain rot’ and doomsday reels. I follow a few painters and artists, so every now and then, an art-related post or video comes up. One such two-minute video showed how a painter approached the subject of a green glass vase as a still painting. While overtly it was a vase kept on a table, reflecting some light, the shades were predominantly green with a little bit of black and white, where the light hit and the shadow fell. Yet, this artist began by covering the canvas in a swathe of grey!Then, the artist went on to use an unidentifiable green (compared to the original photo) and create the outline for the vase. Slowly, they started filling the bottle with different shades of grey, followed by blue, green, black and white. What must have been a few hours' worth of painting was reduced to a timelapse video of 90 seconds! I wouldn’t have thought that grey could have been the base for a green vase’s glassy effect. So, I immediately hit ‘like’ and ‘saved’ the video.The algorithm picked my interest in the video and suddenly started showing me videos of artists mixing and matching (seemingly) unrelated colours to land up with the exact image as the original. This could have been a dash of purple to someone’s brown hair, a bit of yellow to someone’s green eyes, a spot of grey on a redwood tree, and so on. I was stunned..I shared these videos with an artist friend, who told me about Colour Theory. To summarise it crudely, it gives us an idea of primary-secondary-tertiary colours and what complements one another. But to delve deeply into it is to see a fascinating world, where the language is colour, and the structure is design. This friend of mine revealed to me how in her very first art class in her graduate school, she was asked to paint the tree outside their classroom. Like most of us, she immediately went for the solid brown trunk and a green canopy. Her professor watched her the entire time and once she completed the piece, asked her to go out and see the tree for herself.Ashamed by what she saw, my friend reported that the tree was actually a dark shade of grey and the leaves were adorned with white lines, instead of the regular green. She questioned, ‘Do we even see the world as it is?’ Something shifted in me after this conversation with her. How often do we see something and presume it to be what we want it to be, rather than see it for what it actually is? The colour theory aside, can we immediately recall if the closest amongst our friends or family wear spectacles, what is the colour of their eyes or if they have a scar somewhere on their face? Do we see with intent?.Then imagine this wondrous world, where the Master Painter puts on a show for us every single day. How keenly are we observing textures, colours, patterns and structures in the natural world? But, how do we become more observant?We need to silence our minds first. Cut the constant chatter, and refocus on the present. See the colour of the walls, the bottle, how the light hits the objects on our desk. See the sky at the same hour every day, in silence, and watch how many colours appear and mix and match on a regular day. See His signature on every masterpiece. And if you are in doubt, here are some lines from Tamil poet, Subramania Bharati’s immortal poem ‘Ethanai kodi inbam vaithai irava’ (how many crores of pleasure have you created, O God)– You mixed the sentient with the insentient,Created the five elements that make this world,And a colourful kaleidoscope, of infinite bliss.

This World, A Colourful Kaleidoscope

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