Phantom Colors

The creation of my artworks is always an explorative process. I layer different colored filters in front of the lights and see how the colors interact with the form and how the camera sensors pick them up.

During this almost meditative process, I've stumbled upon the creation of a few Phantom Colors. Colors that don't exist in light, but are nonetheless present when I capture them through photography.

These colors - browns and greys - do not exist as wavelengths in light, lighting filters cannot create them, and LED light sources cannot mix them. In pigment, grey is a lack of chroma and hue. If I were to put a grey filter over a light source, the only result would be to decrease the intensity of the light without changing the color of it. Similarly with brown, a brown filter would only result in making less light output, but it would color it slightly amber or orange.

On computer screens, these are rendered through combinations of red, green, and blue lights mixing to make a white or orange which is then decreased in luminosity. The colors around it also serve to influence how your eyes perceive the greys and browns.