The multiple disciplinary fields with an interest in colour studies presents an environment where there may be both agreements and misconceptions about how different domains understand colour. In response to a discussion with a psychologist about the curriculum for students undertaking practical degrees in the visual arts, this paper aims to explore the different foci of expert knowledge within creative disciplines. While the ‘teaching’ about practical and perceptual elements of artistic practice and reception has, at least in the UK, become downplayed in relation to the emphasis given to process, strategy and criticality, colour theory and practice still constitutes a part of many textile design undergraduate programmes.
This project explores current knowledge and understanding about colour by a respondent group (n=40) of Textiles Masters students at the Royal College of Art, London. The postgraduate student community is drawn from many nationalities, including American, Chinese, Russian, Turkish and Thai, giving a range of prior experience and cultural specificity. The intention is to provide a platform for further studies on nomenclature, systems of visualisation or specification, and preference. These are topics which have been addressed from linguistics, technology and psychology, but there is little systematic work from within creative disciplines. The premise is that by looking more closely at contemporary disciplines in which the application of colour is part of creative practice, we might usefully gain insights that could inform the orientation of future work in adjacent fields.