About the Artist:

I have always been fascinated with color and the emotional effect color has on people’s moods and attitudes. The foundation of my fascination comes from the fact that I am profoundly color blind and have a rare form of color blindness (called deuteranopia.)

Deuteranopia is a color vision deficiency moderately affecting the red-green hue discrimination in 1% of all males. It is a hereditary and sex-linked form of dichromatism in which there are only two cone pigments present. I have a particular form of deutranopia called dichromacy in which one of the three basic color mechanisms is absent or not functioning. Dichromacy occurs when one of the cone pigments is missing and color is reduced to two dimensions. While I can see color, they are very different than what a person with normal color vision sees.

If you would like to see what I see follow this link and download some of the artwork to run through this simulator.

Throughout my life people have asked me to describe what it is like to be color blind. I have no logical answer. Color invokes emotions and memory is often linked to color. It is this aspect that drives that nature of my artwork and approach.

I like using bold and intense colors (as I am able to see these much better than subtle shades) although I am often told that my art often embodies strong color field depth and shading. As I do not see a conventional color representation of an item, I tend to paint in the abstract about a memory or feeling I have about the subject of the art. I work with Acrylic paints as I find them more challenging to work with when blending colors. I predominately start with primary and secondary colors and blend directly on the canvas to reach a broader color spectrum.

I live in the New York Metropolitan Area and hold a Master's Degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. My family has a tradition steeped in the arts. My uncles own a world renowned art gallery in New York City, aptly named the Heller Gallery; which was designed by another uncle: Robin Drake, who is an architect. My extended family includes critically acclaimed guitarist Arlen Roth, whose father is Al Ross - a painter with work in the Guggenheim Museum as well as a New Yorker cartoonist for nearly half a century. My mother, Angela Heller, is a photographer and my sister-in-law, Courtney Conwell, a recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts. The list goes on...