MY PAINTINGS

I am not a chromaethesiatic but certain types of sounds evoke my imagination and take me into world of dancing lines, curves and colors. I certainly don’t see them in front of me but imagine them strongly. It is kind of seeing in mind and feeling inside. Sometimes I become part of the melody and start moving with it and coloring myself through it. Not every piece of music makes me feel passionate to paint it but certain composers such as Pavarotti make me get up and start painting. I often use this skill (Should I call it as skill?) to determine either a piece of music I am listening to is strong, passionate and creative enough to be a great hit or just a melody that will remain as is. I certainly don’t set any rules before I start painting. I place long papers on the floor, mix random colors on my palette, listen to the music once and if it makes me visualize the colors, shapes and the motion of it, I start painting as I listen to it. If someone sets a camera to track my eye movement would probably see my eyes following a path as my arms do when I paint. Most of the time I can not catch up with speed of the sound if it moves so fast so I stop playing the music to go back to where I left to capture the shapes and colors that I desperately seek to paint. After I am done painting, when I look at the art I just created, I experience the same feeling, hear the rhyme and visualize it moving and forming shapes again. When I try painting the same piece several times, I end up using the same colors and shapes and my paintings look just like the first one I painted.  

Reading all about chromaethesia and trying to understand my paintings of sound made me come up with few statements to explain why  and how I paint melody;

• My paintings of sound are result of my creative imagination
• It is a personal experience and the method I use is not compulsory
• There are no rules set before and after
• My paintings of sound are combination of my emotions that are evoked by certain sounds and the melody itself that I am listening to
• Sound does not make me to see colors and shapes moving in front of my eyes but in mind
• I am aware of the environment, when I paint sound
• My emotion does not take over reason but cooperate with it
• Same music evokes similar emotions at different times and environments

Below are some of my experiments by listening to Pavarotti – my apologies for the quality of images