Color Temperature

What color is a white shirt? There are quite a lot of colors in a white hue actually. Consider what you know about light. I'm thinking of Newton's prism. In the 18th century Sir Isaac demonstrated that white light was composed of a wide spectrum of hues. The implication being that we see an apple as red because the skin of the apple absorbs light in all wavelengths but red. A black object absorbs much of the visible spectrum, but not all. A white object reflects a greater proportion of light, but not all light. In a white shirt it is possible to see yellows, blues, reds, greens, etc. Of course, few of these colors are very intense, and taken as a whole the are subsumed into the unity of the white garment.

This is a complex concept to get your mind around: that a white object is not white. But it is essential to representational painting. In fact, the concept has led to the creation of some of the best known paintings in the last few hundred years. From narrative paintings of Lawrence Alma Tadema, to Georgia O'Keefe's floral compositions the creative possibilities of the "white" composition have long inspired artists. The same could be said the the "black composition" or the "red."

What makes these paintings so engaging are temperature variations is color. Temperature is more of a metaphor. A more technical term would be chromatic variation. Think of a green. Think of a sea green and a lemongrass green. Both are still green. One would be impure toward yellow, the other toward blue. That contrast can be thought of a variations in temperature: warm = yellowish greens; cool = bluish greens. Returning to our white shirt, I've painted with with orange whites, blue whites, violet whites, and yellow whites.