your man was talking out his empty paint tin. Colours are immutable, fixed in physics.
Some years ago I went into a house paint store to get a match for some older paint, "no said the pea-brain in there, "we don't do that colour any more this year they are all new colours"
'No they aren't'
'yes they are'
'no they aren't'
I said to her, ' if you could invent a new colour you'd be rich beyond all dreams, colours are fixed,you have your basic spectrum, thereafter its all shades, pigments and mixes, just the silly names dreamed up are new'
She just could not get it, i't says in the colour chart they are all new'.
,more or less the same applies to your useless painter.