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The Observer, Sunday August 11th 2002 For further details, please contact Jane Mackay
I hear music and see sound
I can see sounds
From the Surgery to the Studio
Teaching the world to sing
Roses are red, names are too...
The Sight of Music
Bernstein: First Movement, Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, watercolour on paper, 23 x 30 cm Tracey Murkett talks to artist Jane Mackay about her extraordinary gift - the ability to see sound Jane
Mackay qualified as a doctor in 1970. Now a full-time artist, she has
exhibited extensively , and the Welcome Wing at London's Science Museum
features her work to illustrate synaesthesia Imagine
listening to music, or hearing a word or noise and seeing the sound as
colour or shape. Artist Jane Mackay paints the images she sees when she
listens to classical music and sees letters, days of the week and names
as specific colours. She has synaesthesia – a neurological condition
which is thought to affect at least one in 2000 people in the U.K.
David Hockney has it, Kandinsky claimed he had it and Mackay believes
many people especially artists, may have it without realising that they
can see things that others don’t. Synaesthesia ‘mixes up’ the senses –
some see sound as colour and images, others perceive taste as shapes.
If you think about it, language is riddled with synaesthetic images –
cool blue, warm sounds and sharp tastes.
Mackay trained as a doctor and worked as a GP in south London until
1999 when she gave up medicine to become a full-time artist –
symbolically throwing her stethoscope into the Thames on New Year’s
Eve, engraved with her dates as a doctor and her starting date as an
artist. Sales of her paintings had become steady enough to make ends
meet and she says, “I just thought, life’s too short!” Music is her
other great passion – she plays oboe in a wind quintet and sings in the
Bach Choir – and she has painted music for as long as she can remember.
“My sister and I used to argue about the colours of the days of the
week as children, and it was years before I realised not everyone could
see sound, or had colours for words,” Mackay says. “ I didn’t put a
name to it until eight years ago. I was talking to a psychiatrist I’d
met about a series of paintings I’d done on Benjamin Britten’s music,
and he said: ‘Oh, you must be synaesthetic’. I’d never even heard the
word.”
The images she gets from sounds are as real as “someone throwing a
bucket of water over you, ”she says. “The colour is part of the sound –
it’s like picking up a cup of coffee and thinking it’s warm – the
warmth isn’t anywhere else – it’s just part of it.”
Mackay is now the first artist in residence with the Cambridge
University Musical Society and sits in on rehearsals, painting what she
hears. “When I’m listening to music the images come instantaneously,”
she says. “Imagination may creep in later, but imagination is quite a
slow process, whereas the synaesthetic image is just there. It’s better
if it’s music you are not used to. Sometimes if it’s a piece of music I
know well, the colours are so familiar I almost don’t notice them.”
The paintings vary according to what she focuses on in the music –
sometimes they are abstract, other times the music she sees is
figurative. She may paint a whole movement; a section of music or the
picture may just show a single chord. Generally the higher the pitch of
music, the lighter the colour, but particular instruments have specific
colours. “Clarinets are usually in blues and bassoons are rich plummy
sienna colours. But the colours of the instruments can often be
overtaken by a musical phrase.”
Mackay says she is probably the only synaesthetic artist to work with a
music group. It is extraordinary, she says, watching the colours of the
music change as she listens. “Sometimes when a note is slightly out of
tune it’s a muddy, opaque colour – when it hits the right note it has
an amazing transparency.” At Cambridge she works at the rehearsals with
a small set of watercolours, making colour sketches with pencil
notations and then painting scaled up versions in the studio, listening
to her recording of the rehearsal and trying to be as accurate as
possible. She can retain colour in her head for years, she says, but it
is mixing the exact tone that takes the time. The main problem with
painting music is the speed at which images come. Mackay tries to be
true to the original vision, “burning down the image onto paper” and
tries not to be too conscious of composition while she’s working.
“Sometimes I’ll do something that isn’t any good as a picture – I’ve
still got images of music in my head that I know aren’t worth painting
for a gallery or client.”
Seeing sounds when you are a music lover can have its problems. “ In a
concert you can be listening very analytically, blocking out any images
– and then someone will cough or sneeze and you get a really strong
image because it’s so unexpected,” she says. “I could paint hundreds of
different coughs.” It can also be distracting when you
‘hear’ an image you like. “ You can’t just get your paints out in a
concert hall,” Mackay says, “ especially if you are singing on stage –
it can be very frustrating.”
Most
tantalising, though, are the fantastic texture or sculpture shapes
Mackay sometimes sees. “I’d love to construct things from music. There
was a wonderful Messiaen piano composition that was divided into 20
pieces – I saw it as a wonderful, transparent, glittering glass mobile
– I’d love to make it – but all I’ve got is a watercolour sketch.”
As a child she says she felt that if she was painting something in
front of her, a landscape or a still life, it was somehow cheating. “If
you are really painting, it has to come from up here,” she says,
tapping her head. “It’s more interesting to paint the essence of
something. I can count on one hand the times I’ve faithfully reproduced
something.” Not surprisingly many of her images have been used as CD
covers and recently Mackay was commissioned to illustrate a book by
Mauritian poet, Danielle R Nairac. The richly visual, biblical poems
inspired images very quickly. “I would be reading, and then suddenly
have the whole scene in front of me and have to try and get it down on
paper as quickly as possible.” Mackay says if she has a commission she
always paints several versions and lets the client choose, rather than
feeling restricted by a client as she’s working. Le Jardin de l'Eden
Many of her paintings are bought by musicians, and her visual response
to music can be more accurate than relying on her ears. “ I was
listening to music on the radio and a choral piece that I knew
extremely well came on and I assumed it was the famous recording by the
King’s College Choir. But the top C instead of being a smooth creamy
arc, which it normally is, had a serrated bottom edge with a pinkish
colour. Although it was almost the same I knew it was a different
recording – not because it sounded different – but because it looked
different.” Mackay says her residency at Cambridge University Musical
Society is the perfect environment for her. She attends almost every
rehearsal and has even discovered an oboist in the orchestra who can
see colours from sounds and had no idea that most people do not. Back
in her converted attic studio, overlooking the back gardens of south
London, Jane Mackay reflects on her good fortune to be working with
musicians. “ It’s absolutely wonderful to be there, sitting in
rehearsals, listening to fabulous music and doing what I love doing –
painting what I hear.” Provided courtesy of Artists & Illustrators Magazine
E-Mail: janemackay@btinternet.com |
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