The sound of painting

In her comment on my (Shipping news) entry, Heidi asked me: “If your paintings could make sound, what sort of sounds would they make?“ My first thought was what kind of music: my immediate thought is jazz. I love to listen to jazz, blues, rock & roll, but mostly pure jazz, the old stuff, and some of the new music. I was introduced to jazz in art school: Miles Davis, Nina Simone. I listened to my few records late into the night, over and over again. Fortunately my neighbors in the slum tenement where I lived in New Haven didn’t complain. (That apartment introduced me to cockroaches; I thought they were cute at the time; I learned!)

I think of jazz first about my painting because it is mainly improvisational. I don’t know before I make a mark exactly what it will be. I don’t know exactly what color a painting will be. I test, I experiment, I play. There’s a theme that does run through all my work: an excitement about using color to communicate form, space, mood. Then there are the marks and colors that come and go, build up, get taken away, return. There are the layers of thoughts, motifs, melodies, sound.

By coincidence, Michael Enright had a section on his program this morning about jazz. Many people write in to him complaining about his choice of jazz as music on his show. He had Montreal’s Katie Malloch, host of CBC Radio’s “Jazz Beat” and Toronto’s Jowi Taylor, host of CBC’s “Global Village” and “The Wire” debate the pros and cons of jazz. And even they didn’t agree on what was “good” jazz. It seems jazz is one of those controversial topics. Some people love it; some people hate it, and those who hate it are more outspoken than those who dislike classical music. Perhaps it’s the same with abstract art. It takes an open mind to “see” it, not come to it with preconceived “ideas’” of what it is “supposed to be.” What jazz and my painting have in common is a basic structure that is the foundation of the work and then the improvisation that makes it what it becomes.

But then I hear an Aarvo Pert piece and feel completely connected to it. When Yoko and I play duets, it’s the Satie that I enjoy the most. The spareness, the feeling that every note counts, is just where it has to be, and often, the wonderment of how did he ever imagine this! Although I play classical piano music, I’ve always wanted to play jazz but don’t have the understanding it takes to play it. I would have to develop that. My painting seems to be enough improvisation so far.

But if I get away from music as sound, think of the sounds that surround us every day, I could see my painting in the sound of the brook that runs by my house—the constant movement, the water rushing over the rocks underneath, the constant churning as it becomes one continuous note uniting everything that moves below the surface. The sound of my painting could be the sound of water as it permeates everything, a necessity for life.

Heidi’s question has me listen to the everyday sounds in my house: the intermittent hum of the refrigerator, the sound my computer makes when I turn it on, the clack of the keyboard as I’m typing, the gentle drip of my mini-fountain, the tick of the clock, Lila chewing on a bone. All subtle sounds that make my house my home. These sounds could be my painting sounds: familiar sounds put together in their own unique way. Crossing the line from one art form to another, from one area of life to another, from one art form to an area of life, opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Thanks, Heidi!

Posted by leya at February 12, 2006 01:20 PM