Colour reaches me as energy before it reaches me as fact. I build with light and contrast and let the surface carry the weight. This is chromatic pressure, and it runs through the image work.

Colour reaches me as energy before it reaches me as fact. Chromatic pressure is what I call this, both the way I compose and the charge it leaves in the finished surface. I build through intensity and contrast rather than accurate hue, pushing pigment, surface, and structure until the surface holds that charge rather than a faithful record of colour. It carries across traditional and digital painting, photography, code, and material experiments, not tied to any one medium or period.

Colour that depends on fine distinctions of shade reads as flat to me, so I compose with light, contrast, and structure instead. I am red-green colourblind. Rather than correct for that, I work from it, taking larger steps across the spectrum than a colour-accurate eye would. As I put it: "Being colourblind, I don't just see colours differently, I remember them differently too." This is the ground chromatic pressure stands on.

The vision channel that separates reds from greens is the one that fails for me. Human colour vision runs on opposing pairs, red against green and blue against yellow, a model called opponent-process theory, and mine sits on that first pair. I compose around the channels that stay reliable, light, contrast, and the blue-yellow axis, which is why chromatic pressure leans on intensity and structure rather than red-green distinction.

My practice moves in cycles. I shift from physical materials to generative systems to digital precision and back again, carrying fragments of earlier works with me. These fragments are living material. Each loop adds friction, accident, and clarity. Transfers, pigment, acrylic mediums, modular assemblies, and machine-led recombinations form a process that mirrors the instability of life, suspended between falling apart and holding together.

No. Some of my processes use generative systems and code, alongside macro photography, pigment, and hand-work, but many works use none of them, and none are made by typing a prompt and taking the output. Where I use these tools, a piece usually starts from a physical or photographic source of my own, passes through digital and generative iteration, then returns to a material print. Every step is led by how I see and decide.

To see chromatic pressure in the work itself, go to Now.

Related reading: how the atelier's editions work, choosing the paper for each work, and about Kalle Hellzén and the atelier.