Artist’s Statement
I was born with the ability to hear in color, a blending of the senses called “synesthesia.” I use that natural ability to paint music. Although they may appear to be abstract, my paintings are grounded in my personal experience of sound. For me, music is lit up with color and full of patterns to recognize, problems to solve, and connections to make. Essentially, my paintings are a code that I use to make sense of and record what I think and experience. No matter how sophisticated a problem is or how fragile or fleeting a thing is before me, I can use my paint to comprehend it and reflect it truly. When my work is going well, I am filled with humility and amazement that I have tracked and recorded some particular thing in the otherwise boundless and continuous world and I can now interact with it.
More importantly, others can interact with it too. I remember one man said about a painting, “the beginning of that piece must be so forceful because the red is so vibrant.” For me, the red was so strong because the piece remained resolutely in the same key throughout. The color red was a record of purity, not force. That kind of information has been so significant to me, showing me that in addition to being truthful to the kind of code that I use, I can try to reach people on their own terms. That interaction is the ultimate product of mature art – not to simply hear what you hear individually or see what you yourself see, but to break out of the isolation of internal experience. To me, reaching people on their own terms is the real prize, even though my process of working is so private.