synesthesia | The Direction of Intention

Mix Harmonious [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 2, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Harmony in color. The place where the language of music finds a home in the visual arts. Synesthesia.

Harmonious color arrangements, like harmonious sound arrangements, must share at least one common “note.” Mix a little yellow into each color on the palette and the colors will work like chords. They’ll be compatible. Pleasing.

It’s probably obvious in my paintings. I’ve never really studied color. I use what pleases my eye (like a musician who plays by ear). Now, I want to know. It’s counter-intuitive; after decades of painting I to want to understand the basics. I want to know what I know and discover what I don’t know. I suspect what I don’t know is monumental.

Long ago, Mike sent me a color study that DeMarcus did when he was in art school. The image is of a cactus. At the base of the painting is the palette that he selected. He framed this piece and kept it on his wall over the course of his very long life and artistic career. It must of been a reminder: don’t forget the basics. It hangs in my studio though, for me, it carries a different reminder: don’t forget your lineage.

Dropping into an episode of Home Town recently, I laughed aloud when Erin Napier said that the only useful thing she learned in art school was the color wheel. I am, as is true of every artist that has been at work for decades, finding my way back to the simple basics.

When I was a kid, pre-internet, I had a cardboard color wheel with a rotating “locator” window meant to help a budding artist know what-color-goes-with-what-color. I didn’t pay much attention to it. It felt like study and I was impatient. I needed to make messes. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but I knew intuitively that I needed to move around to learn. I made swatches for days. I made some terrifically ugly color combinations. I painted some perfectly awful paintings. I still do.

The bubble-of-learning is moving from my body and slowly – ever so slowly – floating up to meet my brain. And, in this contentious world, I’ve decided that the best place to start is with harmony. Harmony in color. A little intentional recognition of sameness to create some pleasing compatibility.

read Kerri’s blogpost about MAUVE AND OLIVE

like. support. share. comment. we appreciate all the colors of your participation.

buymeacoffee is a “tip jar” where you can help the slow-witted-artists you appreciate learn at long last what color goes with what.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Education | Tagged: artistry, color, color theory, color wheel, compatibility, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Erin Napier, harmony, Home Town, intention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, recognition, sameness, simplicity, story, studio melange, synesthesia, the basics, the melange | Leave a comment »

Taste The Sound [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 6, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Toadshade trillium. Say it out loud and taste the sounds. Toadshade trillium. Yummy words worthy of e.e. cummings.

I am working in a tech space and keep a document on my desktop: Terms in this Unknown Land. Tech folk speak in acronyms, PAI and SMB, SERP and TAM. Although my colleagues are mostly left-brainers, they are remarkably poetic in their language, peppering their acronym-speak with tasty terms like “cluster calculations” and “stemmings.” I admit to losing the sense of the conversation in the sound. They are, despite the stereotype, passionate and creative and unconsciously poetic. “Plots a curve of probability.”

Toadshade trillium. Plots a curve of probability. Forget the meaning and taste the sound! What might Mary Oliver have done with those syllables!

My lesson this week: I cannot stand and work at my computer all day. I can do the standing (I have a stand-up desk) but staring at a screen eventually shuts down my brain. Across from my stand-up desk is my drafting table. I think better with big pieces of paper and a pencil and then translate back to the computer. I need to move to think but that’s only part of the lesson. When at the drafting table I’m more likely to take things less seriously. I free myself. I get snarky and funny and scribble and draw big arrows and make fun of myself and the logjam in my thinking. I play.

And, while I play, I talk aloud, and hear the sounds of the shapes that I draw. Poetry and motion. Taste the movement. One and the same. Free the thinking. It’s enough to scare the dog but it’s liberating to my kinesthetic necessity. I scribble notes in every direction and dance back and forth between word and image. Consequently, I produce better work.

Thank goodness I finally tasted a few word-sounds that sent me tumbling into a productive scribble dance.

read Kerri’s blogpost about TOADSHADE TRILLIUM

kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

Filed under: Art, Body, Creativity, KS Friday, Language, Uncategorized | Tagged: acronyms, artist, artistry, composer, dance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, e.e. cummings, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerri sherwood on pandora, kerri sherwood yamaha artist, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kinesthetic, language, learning styles, Mary Oliver, motion, movement, musician, poetry, poets, pulling weeds, sense making, sound, story, studio melange, synesthesia, taste, technology, the melange, toadshade trillium, two artists | Leave a comment »

Collaborate & Hear Blue [on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 19, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

blue, blue, this world is blue

Kerri took a photo of a blue ball, the initial under painting for the next piece in my Earth Interrupted series. And then, giggling, she disappeared up the stairs. I knew the blue ball met its fate in Photoshop because her giggle became a full scale cackle. I call it “the design cackle.” I only hear it when she is reordering the visual world, when she drops out of the known reality (a shared space) and plays gleefully in designland (an internal space).

Later, when she reemerged, my distant-traveler wife, flipped her screen around. Instead of showing me an image, as I’d expected, she’d cued a song, Love Is Blue. “Have you ever heard this?” she asked, “The blue ball reminded me of this song.” As we listened. She told me the news of the day makes her blue. I learned which notes were blue. Finally, she opened the image for me to see. “I call it, “blue, blue, this world is blue. What do you think?”

It was a full blown experience in synesthesia, tasting words, seeing sounds.

Last week our neighbor, John, a terrific artist, asked if Kerri and I ever collaborate or discuss our work. I smiled, my answer as much a surprise to me today as it was the day after Kerri and I met. “Every day,” I said. Every day.

The latest morsel. Ours. Beautiful, bold, and primary.