The Painting Center - Volume UP: Artists Responding to Music and Sound

For many, art is seen as a wholly visual practice, inexplicably tied to the presentation of ideas in a manner that engages the optical nature of how we experience life—our literal “seeing” of the world. While artistic practice is often physically grounded in vision, much of what is “seen” in art stems from experiences linked to our other profoundly innate senses.

Do we experience texture in a painted or collaged surface with our eyes, or with the realization of how it likely felt to the artist as they worked the surface or what we think (or know) the material would feel like in our own hands? Likewise, when describing the forms of a painting or drawing, criticism often leaves the ocular realm by describing the work as calm or angry; ephemeral or violent; flowing or disjointed; empty or frenetic—all dichotomies that strongly exist in the auditory realm. These critical reactions…