Synesthesia

"We know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream.”

A friend of mine, a Master of Music teaching at a Queensland College, visited me recently. As I had several of my paintings on display for him, he looked intently at them, before stopping to gaze longer at one in particular. He then looked at me, and said, I hear ‘Sibelius’ when viewing this painting. Though I have occasionally thought of a particular tune when looking at a painting, I’ve never experienced this type of association before. In fact, for many of my paintings, I ‘hear’ the ‘Sound of Silence‘, a song made famous by Simon and Garfunkel. For a number of my paintings , the peace and the silence, suggested by the painting, is purposely so. I recently began to research a phenomenon known as Synesthesia, where colours, patterns, and other sensory stimuli in one of the senses, elicit sensory perceptions in another. Usually, the sense of hearing gives rise to visual perceptions of colour, or even numbers. In my friends case, his visual sensation gave rise to an auditory response, and a very particular one, in ‘hearing’ the music of Sibelius. If any of you have had a similar experience, please let me know, as Painting involves all of the senses to one degree or another, and, not surprisingly, each influences the another. My friend has left me, however, with an even greater appreciation of Art, and all that it gives, and all that it means, in the sheer enjoyment I experience when putting brush to canvas!