Imprinted Seal Exhibition 2025 - Article

 

IMPRINTED SEAL SERIES 4

2025

ARLENE RABINOWITZ

Sight through sound

Sound through sight

 

 

“Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. ” Leonardo da Vinci

Concept of artworks

All the artworks chosen for this exhibition were drawn to Rock jazz music. Namely to the band Deep Purple. The aim of the exhibition was to find ways to translate the music to a personalized visual language. The artworks are inspired by music and its analytical translation to visual art.

The exhibition is divided into two sections, black and white series where the artist wished to preserve the impressions and atmosphere observed from her immediate environment. These were drawn to songs from the album “Turning to Crime”. The second series is of abstract drawings reflects time and motion via analytical translation of the instruments played in the songs, “Apre’x Vous” instrumental version. “Wring that neck” and “dancing in my sleep” There are connections to the meanings of images and shadows and sound to sense associations.

Listening to music often conjures images in the listener’s mind that can induce emotions in the process. The theme of the natural world draws the viewer to consider alternative imaginary meanings and its symbolic associations, which exist between them.  The choice serves as a metaphor to varied consciousness levels perceived by the artist to express deconstruction and destruction elements. (Watchful Eyes). The spectator is invited to participate in or identify with the visual language that the artist explored in her search. The theme was explored in pastel and clear acrylic glazes on paper via spontaneous linear marks and a fragmental approach.

 Translation of music and its perception

In the abstract artworks the artist did not conjure an image initially with a song but in abstract mark making technique following a linear and dots technique, a project called Sound Travel. Whereby the analysis of the whole composition of the song and parts of and later segments of the individual instruments, were drawn in blocks. This was a gradual process and was divided into levels of transformative layers perceived as a visual symbols or images. Working in layers upon layers whereby (Watchful Eyes) the images appear and disappear using pastel and acrylic washes. It was a process that revealed transformations from how the translated sounds were perceived by memorizing the song numerous times.

 

The Drawings & Technique: The interpretation and perception and sensory fusion of Rock music to painting

In the drawings in graphite, (Black & white) are semi realistic artworks and inspired by immediate environment of Neot Semadar. An emphasis on tree trunks like the acacia and "yanbut” is evident throughout. The artist experienced shapes, texture and movement creating landscapes that are referred to as maps drawing to the beat and tempo of the music.

In the abstract drawings the artist demonstrates sensory fusions through sight, sound, taste and hearing. Ways of experiencing, seeing images the world of natural elements that the artist perceived from the musical composition. Prints of various stages of the art work (Watchful Eyes) demonstrate the levels of transformation between each perception of the instruments used in the songs. Through numerous listening sessions images likened in the imagination to symbols like waves, rock art, architectural building, plants and bubbles appeared once further listening sessions and the song was played to and memorized. The artist perceived the colour choices intuitively when seeing a particular color upon hearing a certain musical pitch or combination of musical notes.

The artworks represented in this exhibition reflect the artists’ expression of translating a musical composition to painting via analytical views of sound perceived. The music dictates the direction of the visual composition in abstract form. Particularly Accents and descents of the music and translating sound pitch dictates the direction of sound in visual terms.

The visual language of the thematic art works expresses the natural world through analogy, symbolism, Repetitive motifs and chromo synesthesia. (Type of synesthesia in which sound involuntarily evokes an experience of colours to a sound).  The particular colours were chosen by changes in instrumentation or timbre, and higher and lower pitches were associated with lighter and darker colours, respectively. The artist also experienced shapes, texture, and movement creating landscape through the listening process of the sound.  Whereby the artist explored the cooperation between the senses (Sight taste and hearing) and the connection between image and picture and shadows.  (Watchful Eyes).

The artist was also looking to experiment and explore with different types of media such as pastel mixed with gesso and clear acrylic medium which were used as glazes wet on wet and be used as a fixative for each layer. (Watchful Eyes; Sail)

Her research evolved around image and shadows of which numerous photographic accounts of transformation to the same songs were done (Watchful Eyes) to arrive at the final piece of artwork.

The artworks were influenced by a previous exhibition titled “Home” (1996) where the artist explored objects from the natural world such as rocks, trees and unidentified objects from her immediate environment.

Arlene Rabinowitz