Colour blindness, what happens when your normal colour vision switched ‘off’?
Colour, a fine record of success, many distinguished people and renowned companies chose Frickers paintings as you can discover by reading my illustrated résumée.
When correctly viewed there are advantages in what is emotively called ‘colour blindness’.
Total colour blindness is very, very rare.
Colour blindness is an emotive term suggesting inferiority.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
To use the more cumbersome phrase “anomalous colour vision” would be nearer the mark, more correct.
In this discourse we explore these issues through the medium of painting as how this is used is medium highly colour sensitive.
Of the 11 % of males and 3 % of females who experience ‘colour blindness’ most have a deficiency, handicap if they make it so, not full on colour blindness.
They experience colour but not as ‘normal’ people do.
This can be a disadvantage however it begs the question how come evolution has allowed this, are there advantages.
Colour Blindness, what is it?
The answer Gordon Frickers and Professor Francis Pratt discovered is yes there can be exceptional advantages.
Colour blindness is almost always hereditary.
A number of famous artists, Monet and Degas being but two, were ‘colour blind’.
‘Red Bales’ offers you an explanation for revolutionary paintings and anomalous colour vision, daltonic responses which have influenced many great painters.
As a painter with anomalous colour vision it has been a long hard voyage for Gordon Frickers to learn to paint using colour combinations as ‘normal’ people see.
In that he had been quite successful by 1989 so when he arrived at the Painting School of Montmiral was already a recognised marine artist.
There were though issues he did not understand, colour responses of which he could make no sense.
It was those dilemmas that drew Gordon Frickers to the unique expertise of Francis Pratt.
Having tested his colour vision Francis initial reaction was “you can’t possibly be a painter“.
An opinion he revised after two weeks of dedicated work saying, “you are very lucky, you have naturally what all good artists seek”.
They worked together both making many discoveries, for examples how Gordon Frickers see or rather doesn’t see certain types of camouflage. He is not fooled by most camouflage which could be an evolutionary advantage as is his apparent ability to see more colour at night than is ‘normal’.
Consequently Francis developed new ideas about human colour responses.
He eventually concluded Gordon was actually very lucky because his anomalous colour vision actually gives him a different but very rich colour experience so was quite likely part of the reason why he reacts so strongly to colour in painting and photography.
Painted on location ‘Red Bales’ (note, the bales are not actually ‘red’ but that’s the title Gordon Frickers chose because he sees the bales as red) is one of two pictures produced plien aire while studying form and anomalous colour vision at the Painting School of Montmiral.
The objective was to liberate Gordon Frickers natural colour responses and discuss the results thus the colours were pushed hard towards but not into extreme.
We have written about colour in some detail on my pages ‘Colour is hugely important to all of us’.
Results: Colour and the artist Gordon Frickers
Colours in Gordon’s paintings have distinctive, resonating, enduring qualities in part because Gordon Frickers has an unusually rich form of colour vision.
These are qualities, gifts he has in common with some of the greatest past masters including Cézanne Degas, Dürer, Titian and Rembrandt, Monet.
Gordon Frickers is one of the very few artists invited to created a one man show of (35) paintings (May 2011) at the European Parliament, Brussels, an impressive addition to his list of exhibitions in other prestigious venues in Britain and Europe.
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Gordon Frickers © 21.05.2015 updated 03/09/2026.
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