It may come as no surprise that two people looking at the same painting will have very different reactions. An artist knows this before beginning a new work, and must decide on an approach in the selection of a dominant colour or in a combination of colours. The interesting thing is that an artist will in the process of selecting colours for a new painting reveal something personal that can provide the basis of a psychological profile.
The science, or art, of colour psychology has been around for some time. It is known that people are influenced by the colours they see, that they choose colours to suit mood and that mood can often be altered by colours. A single colour can stimulate a reaction, but a more specific reaction can be stimulated by a selection of more than one colour. Equally, the choice of a single colour can be revealing of a person's state of mind. More revealing is the choice of a combination of colours.
Considering first the impact on one's state of mind of a single colour, or a group of colours, we can say that people are influenced. If one knows how to effect a change in mood by the choice of a colour, it is easy to see how this can be used commercially or in other ways to influence buying behaviour, or to influence choice, say in the selection of a person to lead a group.
Dress a person up in the appropriate colours and a group will respond favourably, but dress the same person up in inappropriate colours and the group response will be very different. Group response not only depends on the colour preferences at a particular instant of people making up a group, but also context.
Colour preferences are both determined by individual experience and by group experience. Not all colour preferences are well understood. For example, in a particular location, sales of bread may be statistically higher in certain hours on certain days of the week, in certain months, in certain seasons, primarily due to the colours on the tags on the bread wrapping.
By data mining, and statistical analysis, one can design a strategy for the wrapping of bread in specific locations for sale on specific days of the week, in specific months, and specific seasons.
What makes the success or failure of such a strategy depends on whether the cost of designing and implementing such a strategy costs more or less than the net returns that would be obtained by doing nothing. In the modern era, the power of computers enables even the smallest company to gain net sales, by researching data on buyer response to colour.
The problem for the artist is whether or not the choice of colours for a new painting will be based on the artist's own preferences or on what the artist feels the public will purchase.
What makes some artists, such as Picasso and Cezanne, more interesting is that they are known to have preferences for very specific colours during periods of their painting lives. Picasso went through his blue period and Cezanne went through his green period.
It is even more interesting to the psychologist of colour when a colour selection has what is called a reinforcer. The reinforcer is a colour that is darker than the colour selected by the artist. The strongest reinforcer is a black. Thus artists that will use a black to reinforce their colour preference are displaying a stronger internal reaction to the psychological properties of that colour within their psyche.
Study lots of people, and you can form a view on what specific colours mean to people in terms of their psychologies.
This internal response may differ somewhat from conventional wisdom. For example, Picasso's blue period may not have meant that he was depressed, but that he felt rather secure and relaxed. Likewise Cezanne's greens may have meant that he felt free and relaxed when he was out of doors enjoying the expanse of nature. These things are up to interpretation.
What is interesting is for you as an viewer of art to try to figure out what the mood of the artist was when the artist painted a particular picture. Could, for example, the painting of the Last Supper by Da Vinci be more revealing of what the artist was trying to do than what Dan Brown was claiming as Da Vinci's goal, that of hiding a coded message.
If one studies the colours used by Da Vinci, one may come up with a revalation as to whether or the intent was to hide a code of some form or to express a very specific mood, one that conveyed an inner feeling about the subject matter far more revealing than anything Dan Brown proposes.
I have done such a study and will present my results in a blog at a later date.