What Color is This? / Gabe, Artist

I found out I was colorblind when I got glasses, so probably about five. And being colorblind is one of the weirdest things, I think because people perceive it in a completely different way than I do. People really ask about it. They think it’s fascinating to them. They always say, “Can you see? How can you drive? Can you see the red and green lights?” And I’m like, “I know that they’re above. The red light is above the green light, and there’s a yellow light in between.” So, it’s not like I can’t see those different tones of color, or they’re always like, “What color is this?” That’s what everybody says. And it’s just odd to question somebody in that way about something that they perceive differently than everybody else, to give them a test to see if they really are that way.

For some reason, with colorblindness, people have no problem at all doing this. Whereas, other things, people would never ask you to test you to see if you have something different than other people. But it’s always like, “What color is this red shirt?” And I’m like, “Yeah. It’s red. I can tell it’s a bright red shirt,” or there’s some other indicator, but I have trouble with red and green and blue and purple, differentiating them, some ways, and I think we see colors completely differently. Our perception of the world is so different that when people encounter someone who is colorblind, it’s almost like we’re this medical oddity to them in some way. First, they think that we can’t see color at all. A lot of people think we see the world in black and white, which is not true for the kind of colorblindness that I have.

And then they think it’s a fun game that they want to test you, but I’m like, “Well, you probably see things completely… You perceive the world in a completely different way, and you wouldn’t think about that with smell.” People have such a range of smells, but with color it’s so distinct. People form their whole identities based on color, and make art practice based on color, and kind of change the way they see the world based on their perception of color. So, really, it shocks them I think, in a different way, but a lot of the artists I know are colorblind, so I don’t feel like it’s impacted me personally as an artist, but I think it’s embarrassing sometimes, because I’ll be in class or something else and say, “Well, what do you think of this red painting or something?” And they’ll say, “That’s a brown painting,” and it’s this moment of like, “I’m wrong about that.”

But it’s hard to explain what it’s like to be colorblind, because I don’t know what it’s like to be you at all. So, for me, it just feels like that’s my version of red, or my version of brown. And so, I don’t see it as wrong in that way. When I see red, to me, it’s my version of red, but it’s not the color picker version of red, and I think that’s actually the danger with all this digitization of things too is that there is a correct red now, in a way. You can point to the hex value of red, whereas I might pick a brown and say, “That’s red to me.” So, it’s just the labeling, in a way, that’s different, I think, more than anything else, and my experience of red, maybe my interpretation of red, or my association with red things throughout my childhood, or my whole growing up, and even people who have synesthesia as the depiction of red would be totally different. They might see something or hear something when they see red.

And so, I think being color blind is probably a little bit having synesthesia in some way, or my associations might just be different with that color than other people’s. I see it as a perception thing more than a physical thing, but it is a physical thing. There’re cones that are different in my eyes, but it feels like it’s my brain telling me something.

I don’t know. I always used to describe it as, “I see red the same way you see red,” but my brain tells me it’s something else. I still feel like I see it the same way you do, but my brain is confused about… It’s unsure. It’s almost like I never learned colors, in a way, because when you’re taught colors, you’re taught, “This is this color, and this is this color,” and if I’m looking at it and my brain is unsure, it’s like it’s telling me, “I don’t know. It might be red. It might be brown. This might be blue. This might be purple,” and I have to make that choice in that moment of, “It’s blue,” but then someone will be like, “No, it’s actually purple.” It’s an uncertainty. It almost feels like I was never taught it in the right way in some way, but I was. It’s just I don’t have that perception ability that other people have, or that language, I guess.

I didn’t mind it for years. I mind it now more because of these weird tests people like to give me. Honestly, this happened to me two weeks ago. I was at a bar with some people, and someone found out I was colorblind, and they would just spent five minutes pointing at things and asking me what color that was. And after a while, I’m like, “You wouldn’t do this with somebody who has other…” Not issues… “But has other differences in them.” You wouldn’t be like, “I don’t know. There’s no good example because you wouldn’t do it.” And so, it’s like my other friend is like, “This is a lot of fun, going through the items in the room to ask what color things are.” It’s like, “We’re not in preschool here,” but people are fascinated by the fact that you can perceive the world in a different way, I think. I think that’s the thing that’s fascinating to them.

They don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t know if they think it’s funny, or if they just can’t understand that I see something completely different than the way they see it. I kind of want to try those glasses. Apparently, they have these glasses that correct certain kind of color blindness, but I’ve never tried them before, and I think the world would just look silly to me through those glasses. It would look like I put a filter on something more than anything else, but I do wonder if I’m walking around and seeing everything complete. I wonder if you see this hyper-colored world that I have never really perceived, but you wouldn’t know either, because that’s how you’ve always seen it.