My choice of composition was difficult because it had to be centered on ordinary objects that one expects to be a certain color. This prerequisite immediately eliminated most things produced by humans. In the plastic world of today, it isn’t shocking to see ordinary objects in new colors. Another condition I used in selecting a composition was to avoid brown. Although there are red browns, yellow browns, and blue browns, I found that most browns didn’t change much when the base color emphasis was changed. So many animal pictures were immediately out of the running. What I chose is a simple natural composition, with leaves and berries abound. Most people expect these natural things to fall within a fairly limited color range. Hence, it seemed a change in color would be most noticeable in a subject like this one.

In some ways, the result is definitely different from reality, but in others, it is surprisingly familiar. Initially, this composition looked strikingly different from the original. If in a real woods, in full daylight, it would be breathtaking to see a sea of purple leaves. But, since this is a painting, if one imagines this to be a picture of the woods at dusk, these colors are almost passable as the real world. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the leaves in a wood appear purplish at dusk, because in the back of my head I would know they are actually green. In the end, however, the painting does demonstrate a simple point; the color scheme of our world isn’t necessary. We could easily have lived in a world where purple represented lush life, in a dense wood.