Garth Lewis

I explore digital colour and analogue colour through the physical and perceptual experience of making paintings. In my recent work I use Chromafile, a software program that simulates paint colour on the computer monitor in the creation of combined painted and digitally printed pictures. Chromafile relates virtual to material colour to set new pictorial problems by sharing a pictorial language through a common colour palette. My aim is to create paintings using original and specific research; the practical solutions and experimental data could have broad relevance wherever there is an established or potential use of digital printing, or where varied printed substrates are part of the output.

A recent AHRC award enabled examination of the relationship between analogue and digital colour using new colour software, digital printing and hand painting within the same picture. This is a project that introduces colour and computer research into my studio practice to formulate new paintings and extend my pictorial practice.

Colour and computing was a shared project with Dr. Ferdy Carabott. We investigated the possibility of using the computer to explore colour ideas for pigment dyeing, printing and hand painting, processes that I use in my own work or when teaching textile design students. Understanding material colour (paints, dyes) and virtual colour became our key research problem with a view to making a practical contribution to the fine arts and textile research and practice (Lewis 1996, Carabott and Lewis 2001, Carabott, Lewis and Piehl 2002). The difference between material and virtual colour was an unforeseen obstacle to our initial enterprise, we found predicting paint colour mixtures on the computer was impossible.1 Extensive research led to an understanding of the difference between analogue and digital colour and importantly a method for reconfiguring the computer colour system (additive), to simulate pigment mixing (subtractive). The result of our efforts was a new colour palette: Chromafile, that works in Photoshop and other imaging systems.