See, after I finish a painting or drawing, when I look back at it, I can actually reread the conversations that were going on around me while I was painting. This also works with movies and TV, but not so much with music.
If I follow the brush strokes and lines and even the layers with me eyes, I can listen to the conversation that was going on around me pretty much verbatim. Sometimes sentences are interrupted, but of course, I'm not painting non-stop, I rinse my brush and stretch and smoke, so that sort of makes sense.
For instance, to this day, if I look at "Morning Catch", I can listen to scenes from "V for Vendetta" because while I was painting this, Doc and Andy were watching it for the second time. This was back in China in mid 2007.
Around the seam in the smaller sale, V is making Evey eggs. At the bottom of the boat, V is promising Creedy that he'll die "With my hands around your neck."
In my Medusa painting, the Pig people of "xenophobia" are accidentally torturing a man while trying to show their highest form of respect.
Over time, it gets harder to read and sometimes only general themes or stories remain, but it takes a long time before that happens.
I've talked about this a few times with some of my friends, and my best guess as to why this happens is based on focus.
You tend to associate your senses to memories; smell, color, heat, music. While I'm painting, I'm extremely focussed on the painting and the details, and so everything I hear gets mixed up with it, so that the little highlights on the pail sail at the back of that boat are forever attached to Evey opting for death behind the sheds rather than to talk about V.
When I paint, I don't tend to feel my body as much as I usually do. I've noticed that after hours of painting, I get up to the realization that my back is aching or that I've forgotten to eat or that my head hurts. I also get flare ups of some sort of arthritis when I paint too much, but while I'm painting, I'm none the wiser. It's not until I'm done painting and focusing on the wider world around me that I take account of bodily aches and pains.
So it would be safe to assume that when I'm painting, my two basic senses at work involve seeing and hearing, and because I'm so focussed, both of these get turned up a few notches, so that anything I hear while painting gets stuck in the paint too.
I'm not sure why this doesn't work with music. I think it might be because when I'm listening to music, I generally day dream and make up my own stories in my head, and those get stuck in the painting just like the movies and conversations do.
The interesting question that goes along with this is whether or not any of this has any effect on other people who see my work. I've only tried once or twice to concentrate on one theme and story while painting to see if other people get any of it, but I've yet to really experiment with it.
Because of this, I don't like to have depressing conversations going on while working on a piece that connotes love and affection, and I don't like to hear love stories when painting about pain or loss. It gets mixed up and I'll always see those things in there. It's like watching Fear Factor while eating a romantic dinner; you just don't mix the two.
The other day I had to leave the room because Andy was watching The History channel and it was a story about Hitler. I was drawing two lovers and after just a short while of drawing to this, I was uncomfortable. I looked at the drawing and saw these horrible things in the pencil lines and I couldn't stand it. So I went to my room and put on some good music. I think I was listening to some of the soundtrack from The Legend of 1900 and of course some George Edmonson.
This is kind of strange, and maybe a bit loony to some people, but it's something that is deffinely a part of my art. I'm going to do some more experimentation and see if any of this can have any effect on other people. For all we know, all artists do this, and it might have to do with why people are drawn to certain paintings. Maybe they're reading what the artist was fantasizing about, maybe a painting they can't stand was painted over the sounds of a couple fighting.
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