Between Sound and Sight: Synesthetic Practice in Aix

Spring ‘25 Modern Art class exploring the relationship between color and sound.

Work made during my synthetic practice in Modern Art.

This semester, I am taking ARH303: Modern Art, which explores modernism through a feminist lens. The course focuses on rethinking the modernist canon by examining how artists—particularly women and marginalized creators—have navigated, challenged, and reshaped dominant narratives in art history.

We looked at the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, with a focus on her 1919 painting, Music – Pink and Blue II. We discussed the concept of synesthesia—the ability to associate sound with color—and considered how O’Keeffe used abstraction to express emotional responses to music. Our conversation raised questions about how sensory experiences influence artistic expression, and how artists translate feeling into form through tone, movement, and rhythm. We talked about the way abstraction of color and organic forms are portrayed through an emotional response to music. We explored how humans utilize sensory expression through engaging with exterior sounds and how we can portray tone, texture, movement/rhythm, and color through art.

Building on that discussion, our class went outside into the city center of Aix-en-Provence for a sensory-based creative workshop. Each student brought materials of their choice and was invited to listen—either to music through headphones or to the ambient sounds of the city—and create an artwork in response. The goal was to explore the emotional resonance of sound and space, and how these elements shape our visual language.

I chose to use watercolor to create an art work while listening to sound. Other students had brought their own materials and earbuds/headphones to listen to music of their choice which they then created an artwork based on the emotion they were experiencing. The pieces incorporated colors, various brush strokes all depicting a unique feeling in that specific time. For me, I just listened to the background conversations (in French) which helped carry my creative thoughts. I used the primary colors with delicate spatial brush movement to express my happy and tranquil tone and the patterns of vocal rhythm. This workshop was meditative and a multi-creative way to understand our personal connections to music/sound/place. I believe the environment is just as important as sound, as it is another main sensory effect to how we reflect our emotions in art. What we hear is in conversation with what we see, and many artists represent that dialogue in their work for audiences to interpret.