"It's like somebody's plugged a light in"

oil, 11x14"

Enchroma glasses allow people who are color blind to see colors on the spectrum they have never seen before.  You can watch videos of adults seeing colors for the first time:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbaouj5EsXs

With the glasses, many people take a few moments to adjust to their new environment.  Some react emotionally.  Some verbally process the experience in a way you wonder if a newborn would, if he or she could.  They are childlike in their exploration of the environment.  It seems purple is especially striking.  Several choose to have this "first" experience in a garden.

(Also worth watching are videos of people with cochlear implants hearing for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbe7x8GP2Ds) 

This painting marks my return to oil painting after more than ten years.  Oil is the preferred medium for many professional painters due to its vibrancy, texture, and endurance over time.  It also comes with additional particularities: it takes a long time to dry, it requires special solutions to wash the brushes...until now, with the development of water-soluble oil paints which require no toxic cleaning solutions and come with no associated smells!

I painted this for friends getting married today who enjoy contra dancing.  As usual, I don't like painting people, so I'm hoping the vibrancy of color can help make up for, say, the lack of faces...  Here's to many more dances to come!

flow

"For the boys -- some of whom can't swim -- the most dangerous part of the journey out of the labyrinth cave system remains the first kilometer, in which they are required to pass through a flooded channel no wider than a person. During this process, rescuers need to hold the boys' oxygen tanks in front of them and swim pencil-like through submerged holes." CNN

I am catching up on the week's news, including learning about the rescue mission of the Thai boys' soccer team from the Thailand caves.  The rescue effort is increasingly time sensitive due to impending monsoons.  I am thinking about the amount of drive, skill and bravery directed at this place.  

Then, I picked up the book I'm reading, Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

"We have seen how people describe the common characteristics of optimal experience: a sense that one's skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing.  Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems.  Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.  An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous."

May God withhold the rainflow.