Arts & Culture
Impressionist Use of Color to Capture Light
Quick fact
Impressionists rarely used black paint; they created shadows using complementary colors like purple and blue instead of gray or black, giving their work an unprecedented vibrancy.
Why this is interesting
When you look at a painting, have you ever noticed that some artists seem to paint the light itself rather than just the objects? What if the secret to capturing a sunlit meadow or a shimmering river had nothing to do with black and white?