Lately some pivotal pieces of my personal philosophical jigsaw puzzle have been falling into place. In my cyber-research certain theorists keep appearing with re-assuring confirmation of things I have already encountered. The way I work means that I always start from a position of personal experience, no matter how bizarre that is sometimes. I go in search of confirmation ‘after-the-fact’ because I am egotistical and independent, I stubbornly want to discover things myself first (even though I know it is the hard way). I have tripped over Goethe a few times, he just keeps on sneaking his way in there. I still don’t know that much about him but he seems to be a ‘poetic scientist’ which is right up my alley. Goethe did some serious studies into colour and came up with something quite esoteric yet extraordinarily rational. When I read his theory I was instantly recalled to a lucid dream I had, a ‘vision’, in the forest on a cold winter morning in Bridgetown
Although I was asleep, I believe I was really awake and moving with my ‘astral’ body. I went outside into the forest and saw a vision so beautiful that any verbal description cannot do it justice. Each tree, bark and leaf still had its original ‘form’ but instead of it manifesting in the ‘local’ browns, greys and greens, it was made from translucent rainbow coloured light, like a hologram I guess, yet more complex. It is difficult to describe because all of the true rainbow hues existed at the same time, in light, occupying the same ‘space’ and yet were also ‘separate’ at the same time. It was like having multiple co-existent views of an entity in space and still the scene maintained its integrity, that is, I could still recognise each separate element. It was extraordinary. It shifted my view of material existence even further away from the traditionally accepted model where matter is ‘solid’ and possesses physical mass and weight.
Just recently I discovered how Goethe rejected the theories of prismatic colour. Through his own experiments he observed that the accepted theory of colour (based on ‘prismatic colours’) was based on a ‘boundary between light and dark regions’. I guess he felt this was too singular and limited. He dismissed the idea that colour came from light and instead felt that it ‘came into being out of a relationship between light and darkness’. This is a small distinction but philosophically sounds more correct to me. It sits much more comfortably within the whole system of universal balance, that is, where one side of any equation simply cannot be more important than the other. It’s a universal law recognised more readily in Eastern philosophical systems. To study this further Goethe looked for situations uncomplicated by the prism - where ‘only light and darkness’ existed. What he found was that the ‘primal phenomenon of colour’ is associated with the qualities of ‘opaque and semi-transparent media’. For me as an artist this has huge implications.
Seamon, D. & Zajonc, A., Goethe's Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature
