What I paint and why

For those who would like to know more about the blogger (me)………

I am a big part of my painting. I paint ideas. All of my abstract paintings express a partcular idea that wants to be released into a world of other ideas.

Sometimes I paint music. I don’t paint to music. I do like to hear music playing while I paint but that would be listening to music as a background enjoyment. Painting music is different. It is not painting to the beat and rhythm of sounds (music). It is painting the sounds of music appearing in my mind as visual shapes, colors and textures floating in their own individual layers. The music I see is what I paint.

IS THIS AS WIERD AS IT SOUNDS? PROBABLY, BUT THERE ARE EXPLANATIONS. I have the gift of Synesthesia (a combination of senses) that allows me to see the music I hear and hear music in what see.

For years I have realized that my interest and appreciation of music was way out of the norm in far too many ways. I have hardly any music memory. Music flows through my consciousness as a nowness experience.

I have always wanted to hold on to melodies, freeze them in time———appreciate their existence and look at their beauty——— before they are whisked away to another dimension.

With much experimentation, patience and inspiration I have come up with my own way of presenting music as a visual art. Here is one example.

Others are in the Three Dimensional Abstract Gallery.

Symphony Snippet (Stravinsky)
mixed media on film
image size 8″ x 11″
framed size 22″ x 18″

© Jane Denison 2011

A CLEARER VIEW OF SYMPHONY SNIPPETS

A CLEARER VIEW OF SYMPHONY SNIPPETS

THERE IS SPACE BETWEEN the layers of sound in a symphony. This layering is what I have tried to capture in my Synesthetic art.

Without layering the shapes and colors of sound would mix into one mess of a shape when you see them.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO SEE THE LAYERS OF SOUND represented in the Snippets when using a frontal shot from the camera. Seeing the actual painting is the best way to understand what I mean.

HERE ARE TWO ANGLED SHOTS from one of Copeland’s symphonies and one of Stravinsky’s showing the actual depth of the paintings.

WITH THIS TECHNIQUE the base and melody can now maintain their own level of importance in the visual as they do in the audible.

For fellow artists

From what I have read about the evolving techniques an artist goes through I wonder just what is the major influence that precipitates those changes. Often they seem to be abrupt and at other times one technique flows gracefully into another one. What is the major influence for the creative mind? Should all artists have something to say embedded in their art?

Observation and personal experience gives me the answer to some of these questions.

Looking at the changes of Frank Stella, for instance, is an illustration of big changes in his creative presentation. In my own experience I have found that representational painting has lost its fascination compared to expressing ideas in more abstract and non representational forms.

Tag Team Mixed Taste Lectures On Unrelated Topics

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver has a fascinating lecture series     with the catchy title of Tag Team Mixed Taste Lectures On UnrelatedTopics.

I attended one of the lectures in mid July with Hilliard More, Art Dealer    and owner of Great Western Art Gallery where I show my paintings. The  topic was Fractals and Vance Kinkland.

Both Hilliard and I are members of the Vance Kirkland Museum so were  eager to hear its’ Director and Curator, Hugh Grant, talk about his friend Vance.

The supposedly unrelated topic on Fractals was presented by Nicholas Ormes, a Math Prof. at Denver University. From my perspective these topics were uncannily more related than one would generally think.

To quote from the succinct overview of Vance Kirkland on the museum web site, he “saw musical explosions and vibrations, mysteries and forces, rhythmic and discordant, in his imagined galaxies and had the artist’s drive to capture these visions on canvas.”

The reason for my deep interest with the paintings and unusual techniques of Kirkland is that both of us have been blessed with the gift of Synesthesia.

My particular gift allows me to see music as colors, shapes and texture in layers as I hear it. This works both ways: I can see certain art (abstract and non objective) paintings and hear music.

Paintings of Kirkland were imaged on the wall during Hugh Grant’s lecture. When I saw his works depicting his vision of the Nebulae I heard very clearly “The Music Of The Spheres.”

The image here is Vance Kirkland in front of one of his paintings. Can you see the Music of the Spheres in his painting?
Awesome, to say the least.

Gallery Show

I WILL BE THE FEATURED ARTIST AT THE GREAT WESTERN ART GALLERY IN DOWNTOWN DENVER UNTIL JUNE 12,2009

YOU CAN SEE TWENTY FIVE OF THE SYMPHONY SNIPPETS SERIES.

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Sonja Elingboe of The Littleton Independent Newspapers interviewed me.

This is her article. 

MUSIC AS COLOR AND FORM ARTIST SENSES MUSIC AS COLOR , FORM

Synesthesia: one sense is experienced through the perception of another sense. For example, one may see numbers in certain colors, or one may hear music when observing particular colors,

When painter Jane Renau Denison, who is gifted with this sensitivity, listens to music, colors and shapes form in her mind. That leads to sketches and a series of transparent, brilliantly-hued, multi-layered paintings, framed to emphasize the depth, shapes and shadows. “Music has layers and I see melodies and movements of music as shapes and colors.” Changes in the time of day, as well as where the viewer is standing, will offer a new view of these floating works, allowing the viewer to “see the music around us.” She views the wide white mat that surrounds each painting as “the quiet of the music hall.”

A new series of paintings, “Symphony Snippet Series,” by Denison, who has homes in Sedalia and Littleton, will be exhibited May 9 to June 15 at Great Western Art Gallery. An opening public reception is scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, May 9.

“”Mixed media” is the category where these paintings would be classified in an exhibit, but each one is different and may combine several traditional techniques. “I do lots of experimenting,” Denison says quietly.

The back is a white mat board, which may be left plain, textured in white, painted a textured black or color, or have a material such as wrinkled silver foil attached in collage style. She then paints images on one or both sides of a sheet of duralar, a non-yellowing, flexible material. She applies acrylic and transparent inks in precise forms, lines and loose, “floated” forms, always careful that it not get too thick (or it will peel). The sheets, one or more frequently two, with different images, are fixed between pieces of matting to allow space and light between layers.

Next, the whole collection of layers is placed in a thick brushed silver metal frame.

Denison remembers lengthy conversations with the gallery framer in order to get the effect she envisioned. Now they have it down to a formula, using a Larson Juhl high quality frame with the other materials, including museum quality glass, she says.