True colors series#

True colors series#

One involves a series of scrambled color discs ranging from one shade to another by microscopic ratios, which a tetrachromat is tasked with arranging in order. Neuroscientists have begun to explore the gene using a combination of computer programs, analysis of artwork, and optical tests. It arises from anomalous trichromat lineage and is entwined with the X chromosome, meaning the few who carry the potential to glimpse the world’s hidden colors are the daughters of colorblind men. And tetrachromacy in humans, only first recognized seventy years ago, remains elusive. Human color vision falls along a vibrant spectrum created from an interplay of genetics and environment: anomalous trichromats (the 6 percent of individuals referred to as “colorblind”) possess two fully functioning color receptors, most commonly blue with either deficient red or green trichromats, encompassing the majority of humans, register somewhere between a hundred thousand to a million colors from a blend of blue, red, and green and tetrachromats, a rare cohort, express a fourth color receptor in their eyes that, in Concetta’s case, corresponds to orange.Ĭolor vision has always been a fluctuating genetic characteristic, developing and mutating over many millennia. She found comfort in the thousands of fresh greens after a rain.Ĭoncetta, a functioning tetrachromat, possesses a rare genetic mutation that illuminates one hundred distinct shades of color for every one perceived by the average person. The clouds soothed her with their fragile lilac blues, slight blushes, and mercurial peaches. When her mother passed away a few years later, Concetta took refuge in nature.

Like her mother, she was an artist, painting rainbows. The sun bounced off each droplet, bending its light into dancing prisms. Indigos, purples, grays, golds, and azures arrayed the blueberry skins, while their insides popped with yellows, greens, golds, limes, pinks, and violets.Īt school she painted the rough, playground fence with water from a metal pail and became immersed in the fantastical hues. The ridges of sandstone shimmered and skipped. The black crow feather dazzled her eyes with violet and turquoise and deep flashes of brilliant emerald. What set Concetta apart, as she turned these treasures over in her small hands, were the colors she saw in them. Not for the way she foraged the natural world like her friends, nor for what she brought back-a dull crow’s feather, a lump of sandstone, a handful of blueberries.

GROWING UP on the outskirts of Sydney, Concetta Antico was a peculiar child.