The mystic color violet sits upon the threshold of your imagination, laughing, "I am not a real color at all!"
But, backing up a bit, no color is 'real'. Color is by definition an illusion. When we say that something is colored by our perception, we mean it is off somehow from the truth.
Violet is even more tricky than the other colors, however. Violet is the color that is not there, except as a concept in our brain. You see, the wavelength of visible red is the longest wavelength of light we can see. Violet is the shortest wavelength we can see.
When we bend the rainbow around into a circle, when the long wavelength, red, laps over the short wavelength, purple, and they hold hands, viola! Violet. Purple. Magenta.
Have you ever noticed that these colors are simply not present in your sky rainbow, or the rainbows you can make on the wall with a prismatic crystal?
Purples and violets seen together in various mixtures can be quite mind-bending. I use purple for this, it tickles my perception. Some people even get uncomfortable with these colors but do not know why. If you average the wavelengths of red and violet, you land in a number that usually denotes green. Yet your brain invents this other color...
Flowers are the best purple makers I know of. I find it absolutely euphoric to gaze upon a garden patch of mixed colors of purple pansies. Flowers are about my favorite way to enjoy color. Flowers often flash colors in the ultraviolet range as well, that bees and birds and a few unusual humans see.
"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it". - Alice Walker
(Links to fun sites about color, how special purple is:) (and here:) (cool utube:)
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