Currently enjoying her first solo exhibition in Finland, artist Liz West talks to Laura Robertson about being deeply in love with colour: on creating vivid sensations through hue and saturation, and the technical lengths she is prepared to go to in order to “mix colour in space”… Liz West holds an iridescent circle up to the webcam, moving it back and forth so I can see it sparkle. It’s a small sample of dichroic glass, invented by NASA and one of West’s favourite materials. She shows me two varieties: a warm hue, which ripples from yellow to pink, and a cold spectrum of blue to green. “With normal glass, you obviously see through it, and it either has a green tinge or it’s clear. Dichroic glass has a wonderful quality. When you move it around the colours change, like the iridescence of a butterfly wing. It’s incredible.”