E-Paper
In the shades: Notes from a formerly colour-blind artist
Prithviraj Shinde, 28, is a video editor and graffiti artist (@Elmacation) with a difference. He was born colour-blind. In an added twist, he recently began to use the EnChroma spectacles that correct colour-blindness, seeing his world — and his art — in entirely new ways. Here’s what that’s been like, in his own words
I discovered I was colour blind when I was 10. An uncle who then painted film posters was visiting and asked me to paint a portrait of someone. We’re a family of artists, so this was not unusual. He noticed, though, that I picked up black instead of brown for the skin. Later, when painting a coconut, I used green instead of brown, for the shell of a coconut.
A quick test showed that I have protan colour blindness, which is to say my greens and reds overlap with other colours. Red and brown look the same, as do yellow and green, and pink and grey. Only the shades differ. So, while other kids were learning their multiplication tables (which I was doing too), I was also memorising the colour schemes of the world around me. My parents would mark my colour pencils.
Funnily enough, it hasn’t mattered to me that much, or to my art, that I don’t see the way others do. The truth is, no one knows exactly how anyone else is visually experiencing the world. It’s all a set of rules that we have collectively agreed upon. The fact that some of my rules are different hasn’t stopped me from achieving what I want.
After I’ve painted anything, I get friends or family to take a look at the colours. A portrait of my sister, for instance, had some grey on her head and neck. I then fix any colours that need fixing.
The people I am surrounded by, friends and family, encourage and motivate me. Through my work, they want me to show them how I see the world. They always tell me to put my vision into my art. But my goal is to paint in a way that you can’t tell I am colour-blind.
When I first put on the EnChroma glasses that my friends had pooled in money for and purchased from the US, we were in a local playground, where we beatbox, breakdance and paint. The glasses were a surprise. Though they’d taken me to an area where the walls were filled with my art, that isn’t what I looked at first. I was staring at the grass. It’s so green. I couldn’t have imagined how green it was.
And then I saw pink. It had always looked like a shade of grey to me. Pink is this light, fluffy colour. I can’t believe now all that I’d been missing. Now I can see maroon, magenta, cyan, purple, violet.
The other day I was in a cab, stuck in traffic, and there was this fruit cart beside me. For the first time I noticed that black grapes are not black. I don’t know what colour that is, but it was not black.
This is going to change my art. I have so many ideas and I am very excited for how it’s all going to turn out.
(As told to Natasha Rego)
