J. M. W. Turner Quotes

Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else - by color.

Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.

I want to know one thing, what is color?

My goal is to formulate a new color theory based on the full spectrum of visible light.

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.

Light in Nature creates the movement of colors.

Black is not a color.

The plate at each point only sends back to the eye the simple colour imprinted. The other colours are destroyed by interference. The eye thus perceives at each point the constituent colour of the image.

Colors are the deeds/ and sufferings of light.

How many colours are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'green'? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye?

You have to understand the nature of light.

In art, as in science, reductionism does not trivialize our perception - of color, light, and perspective - but allows us to see each of these components in a new way.

In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

OK, so what's the speed of dark?

There are colors we can't see, but they're connected to the ones we can, There's a connection between everything.

I am interested in the physicality of light itself.

It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from the same color which is located in light. Shade makes color dark, whereas light makes color bright where it strikes.

Remember the enemy of all painting is gray: a painting will almost always appear grayer than it is, on account of its oblique position under the light.

We never really perceive what color is physically!

Violet has the shortest wavelength of the spectrum. Behind it, the invisible ultraviolet. Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Poor violet, violated for a rhyme.

But what I attach great importance to is observation of the movement of colors. It is only in this way that I have found the laws of complementary contrast and the simultaneity of those colors that nourish the rhythm of my vision. There I find the representative essence — which does not arise from a system or an a priori theory.

When we sit down to draw or paint the sun's rays, we generally use yellow because in the morning and the evening with the blue light scattered away so strongly you're left with a little bit of red and it comes out yellowish.

Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon – it is the very heart of painting. Repeated experiments with adjacent colors will show that any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences.

In the end, color combinations come down to our personal preferences, which we must discover through observation and experiment.

Everything is made of light