But the moonlight painting gives it away. Most people don't see any colours under low light, and being able to see and paint a colourful scene under those conditions is a unique ability.
Of course it could be imagination, but it doesn't look like it. The tree and the moonlight paintings have similar colours to the ones you'd see if you took a photo of a scene and turned up the saturation in Photoshop, with a few extra shades. It's a surprisingly literal and unimaginative form of exaggeration, and it's not how most painters distort colour for effect. So I'm more inclined to think it's a perceptual feature, not a creative choice.
- It should be easier for them to paint highly photo-realistic scenes.
- They should struggle to find the right colors to buy in the shop.
- They should be frustrated with mixing colors because they could never get the color right as they see it.
In addition, painting photo-realistically is more about edges and angles than colors.
Just imagine if the pigment selection were designed by a color-blind person.
For example, if you hold up your hand to shield your eyes from the sun, that's a pretty challenging situation to paint. But the way the after images of the sunlight interact with the silhouette of the hand suggested to me that the idea could be conveyed by painting a shimmering primary colour halo around the hand. And sure enough, Antico's paintings look much like what I had in mind.