Artist With Ability To See 100 Million Colors Describes What They Look Like
Video screenshot via The Cut
You might have astute color vision, but it’s probably nowhere close to how much painter Concetta Antico perceives. That’s because she is a tetrachromat: someone whose retinas come with four photoreceptors instead of three, allowing her to see 100 times the number of colors the average person can.
The Australian artist, who says she recognizes up to 100 million colors, describes in a video produced by The Cut that single hues, as most people perceive, appear multifaceted to her. Rain, snow, and fog, for instance, display themselves as “rainbows.”
“I see colors in colors,” Antico says. “White isn’t [just] white. It’s all varieties of white—it’s almost like a mosaic…”
“I am passionately in love with black, too,” she divulges. “Birds like crows, ravens, and starlings are my favorite. I see violets, blues, and emeralds in their feathers. I wear a lot of black.”
If you’re tetrachromatic, you might also be able to detect if a person is ill right off the bat. Antico says she can tell if her daughter is sick when she appears “greenish-yellow and maybe whitish-lilac.”
Eating is a wholly visual treat. The painter especially loves snacking on blueberries, as their skin gives off a sheen of purples, grays, gold, magentas and azures. When she bites into them, she sees “every type” of gray, yellow, green, gold, pink and violet.
However, visiting the grocery store isn’t all that enjoyable for Antico, who describes her shopping experiences as, “a color assault,” no thanks to its plethora of harsh colors like red and yellow.
Have a glimpse of Antico’s intriguing kaleidoscopic world in the video below.
[via The Cut]
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