Color Lexicon
by Matthew Deleget

The following text was published in the exhibition catalogue Radiant Energy on the occasion of the three-person exhibition of works by Gabriele Evertz, Robert Swain, and Sanford Wurmfeld curated by Mary Birmingham at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, NJ, 2018.

Words elude many of us when speaking about color painting. Here’s a basic primer of color terms to help us refine our discussion about color and its effects. Related terms are grouped together for ease of use. Note that many of the terms below can be used in combination with each other, for example “secondary hue” or “subtractive primary colors.”

Color Theory – A system for understanding the organization of all colors, how they are mixed, how they interact, and their resulting visual effects and experiences.

Color Wheel – A tool containing individual colors arranged around the perimeter of a circle to help us understand color relationships. Although the precise placement and organization of colors on the wheel has been widely debated, a color wheel generally features the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors as they appear in the visible spectrum. Colors are placed equidistant from each other, and complementary colors are located directly opposite from one another on the wheel.

Primary Colors – Red, yellow, and blue. These three colors cannot be produced by mixing other colors together nor can they be reduced any further into other colors.

Secondary Colors – Orange, green, and violet. Mixing pairs of primary colors produces these colors. Red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, and blue and red make violet.

Tertiary Colors – Colors that result from the mixture of primary and secondary colors. For example, yellow and green make yellow-green, blue and violet make blue-violet, etc.

Achromatic Colors – Black, white, and all grays. Colors that lack a hue are often referred to as neutrals, but they are anything but neutral when used in a painting.

Hue – A single, pure color.

Value – The lightness or darkness of a color.

Saturation – The relative purity or intensity of a color. A color becomes less saturated when mixed with another color, any color. For example, a primary red mixed with white becomes an unsaturated pink[c1] . The red is now both less pure and also a lighter value. Most colors we see in the world are unsaturated.

Warm Colors – Colors often associated with sunlight, such as red, orange, and yellow.

Cool Colors – Colors often associated with an overcast day or nighttime, such as blue, green, and violet.

Monochromatic – Using only one color.

Polychromatic – Using two or more colors; in other words, multicolored.

Analogous Colors – Colors that are adjacent to one another on a color wheel.

Complementary Colors – Colors that appear opposite each other on a color wheel. The basic complementary color pairs are red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet. When used in a painting, complementary color pairs heighten each other’s intensity the most.

Surface Color * – The color of a shape in a painting that helps us identify the object being depicted. We see surface color as a sensation. From sensation, our minds transform surface color into film color and/or volume color (described below) through our perception. Perception involves our experiences and memory.

Film Color * – The effect of a color’s luminosity where the color appears to separate from the surface of the painting and float out in front of it.

Volume Color * – The appearance of shallowness or depth of a color in a painting. Generally speaking, light colors advance forward while dark colors recede into space.

* Surface color, film color, and volume color are the three modes of appearance originally articulated by the psychologist David Katz in the 1930s.

Additive Color – The behavior of light mixtures (an immaterial substance). For example, red and green light mix to make yellow. All colors of light projected onto each other would ultimately produce the color white.

Subtractive Color – The behavior of paint mixtures (a material substance). For example, red and blue paint mix to make violet. If all colors of paint were mixed together, they would produce a dark brown.

Simultaneous Contrast – An optical effect first noted by Leonardo da Vinci and later analyzed in great depth by the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, director of the Gobelins Manufactory’s dye works in Paris during the early 19th century. When two colors are placed next to each other, they impact each other’s appearance and our perception of them. This effect is most pronounced when complementary colors, such as blue and orange, are placed adjacent to each other. The colors appear to vibrate optically. However, when only one color is present, say blue, and its complementary, orange, is not, our mind’s eye will call for it. This effect is called afterimage and can be observed, for example, when we stare for a while at an area painted blue and then shift our eyes over to a white wall. An orange sensation will linger before our eyes.

Successive Contrast – An optical effect that occurs when viewing one color and then another. A shift occurs in our perception of the second color. For example, if we look at a green area and then look at a yellow area in that same painting, the character of the yellow will be tempered by the afterimage of green. The yellow will appear more reddish, which is the complementary color to green. It is always the complementary color that will appear successively. Most colors are seen in the successive mode so we rarely see a color as it truly is.

Reverse Contrast – The optical effect where a color assimilates and appears to spread. It begins to take on the appearance of a color adjacent to it.