Choice Overload

I recently heard a talk on the subject of "Choice Overload".    Choice overload is a cognitive situation in which people have a difficult time making decisions when they are confronted with lot of different options. The more options they are given, the harder it becomes to choose among them. It can happen when ordering from a menu at a restaurant, or in the wine aisle at the grocery store. I can certainly relate to this phenomenon from personal experience!

I was reflecting on choice overload when it suddenly struck me--one reason that I love using a limited palette is that it helps me avoid choice overload. I put only seven colors on my palette: cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red light, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue hue, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and raw umber. And white, of course. From these colors, I can mix any other color I need.

When I go to mix a color that is somewhere in the yellow range, I don't have to stop and wonder which yellow to start with. [FYI to you non-painters, there are many, many yellows,  and some painters put multiple yellows on their palette, including Naples yellow, Cadmium lemon, Cadmium yellow light, Hansa yellow (light, medium and deep), etc. You get the idea.]. With only one yellow on my palette, I reach for it automatically, and get to mixing. No choice overload!

Unfortunately, a painter can't avoid choice overload altogether. The real panoply of choices arrives when you start trying to identify what you are seeing. Among the vast visual information that makes up the landscape, where is the darkest dark? the lightest light? the most intense color? Is that red awning leaning toward the blue, or the yellow?

And there are even more choices to be made when mixing colors from the paints that come out of the tubes. For me, there is no fixed formula. Instead, there are many different ways to arrive at the same color. Hmmmm: perhaps a subject for a future post...