the Sound of a Painting
Often when reading or listening to interviews with other artists (specifically painters) I lean forward a little more closely when the question is asked: “and do you play anything while you are working, if so, what do you usually listen to?”
It’s very rare for me to not have on any music when I am painting. The cross pollination between my senses is hard to separate. Even as a listener, the right song can feel so powerful that it feels as vital to my studio practice as my brushes and my paint tubes. I see the influence of sounds moving across my canvas, traces of what was played on repeat. Some tracks are in the repeat rewind stage for months. Getting to really know a song can take a long time, but usually the recognition that I will want to have that longer term relationship with it is immediate. I look at my paintings I’m working on and I can see where I used the sound to stay in the rhythm just as easily as I can see where it was lost.
A modulation turns into a favorite movement, creating a visual symphonic poem seen in a landscape. In tandem the sounds play with the colors, and they dance. Chaotic palettes give way to quiet rest spaces, letting the other colors breathe. As I am hoping mature as a painter, I wonder if there will be a departure from the sparkly nature of my compositions into something that calms me down. Only time will tell.
Lately I’ve been daydreaming of my next paintings. And asking if there could be any connection made with my current crush on the phenomenon of frisson. How it would feel if my paintings had THAT in them! Is it easier to have aesthetic chills from a song than a painting? It feels like maybe it could be related to the viewer and their patience, their curiosity, the willingness to be open to what is being communicated. A painting doesn’t just clap down the eardrums with thunder of cymbals and bass. You have to slow down to read a painting. A collaboration involved. For the listener, you can go deeper in a song, if you want to, but the frisson will happen at a superficial listening too. For a painting, more is being asked of the listener. There is a more passive start, a quieter invitation to come in closer. Since the painting does not demand the senses so immediately, the risk of the viewer giving up or feeling intimidated before they hear it is there.
What if the way I have been constructing my paintings (so textured, not so static, full of movement) have been influenced by this desire? When asking my husband if he thought visual art might hold frisson like a Debussy composition over dinner last night, he said that’s the thing about sound waves…they can literally reach out and touch you.
Setting frisson aside for now, I’m realizing that some of the best paintings I have been lucky enough to make have one thing in common - I see them before they arrive. I lie awake at night imagining them first. Well, no. It’s more that they come to me, and I watch them. Sometimes they appear in a flash and I have to go within to see them again. Other times, I can sense a 3D effect of their vague structure in front of me. And I observe them there for a while, in awe, curiosity, and maybe some fear that I’ll “lose” contact. The few times this has happened, it was like a sort of waking dream where the paintings let me study them for as long as I wanted to. I could even practice making them in that thought-space before anything fully materialized in the world.
This mystery space intrigues me so much that I have started rearranging my life in hopes of finding it and other better paintings more often. By cleaning up any extraneous distractions, I want to expand my receptivity. “Does this help support me becoming a better painter?” If it doesn’t hold me as an artist, I don’t want it. It sounds kind of grandiose, but for clarity, these reevaluations feel more humble in nature. Ultimately it’s about editing out the self and being in service to something much bigger that has nothing to do with me. And I really wish I had been asking this how does this support me as an artist question all along. Maybe I have, but I wasn’t totally aware of it in such an explicit way. What matters now is that I am focused on actively holding the magic wand, and I know I want to learn the spell I want to cast.
If want these “not from me but through me” paintings to be less uncommon, I think I will need to maintain the balance of moving through life’s routines without losing the focus on the singular version of the artist I was born as. Maybe being a better painter means being an even better listener. What will the sound of my next painting be?
