Think of a song you love. Not the words, just the sound of it. Is it warm or cool? Sharp or soft? If it had to be one colour, which would it be?
Most of us answer faster than we expect. That's because somewhere, we already know.
The night at the opera
In 1896, Wassily Kandinsky was a young lawyer in Moscow, nearly thirty, with a promising academic career. One evening he went to the Bolshoi to hear Wagner's Lohengrin. Later, he wrote that as the music played, he saw all his colours in his mind, lines and shapes forming in front of his eyes.
That same year he left law, moved to Munich and began to study painting.
Colours that sound
Kandinsky spent the rest of his life trying to paint the way music moves. In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1911, he compared colours to instruments: a light blue like a flute, a deeper blue like a cello, the darkest blue like an organ; a bright yellow like a trumpet.
He even named his paintings like pieces of music: Improvisations, Impressions, Compositions. This one, from 1923, is full of circles, lines and triangles that seem to bounce, hum and ring.
Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Paint a song
You don't need to know how to draw. That's rather the point.
- Choose one piece of music, ideally without words. Something you love, or something you've never heard.
- Set out paper and whatever you have: watercolours, crayons, a single pencil.
- Before you start, listen to the first minute with your eyes closed. Notice where the music sits in your body.
- Play it again and let your hand move with it. Dots for sharp notes, long lines for held ones, colours for the moods. No figures, no objects.
- When the music ends, put the brush down, even if it feels unfinished.
- Look at what you made for a few breaths, without judging it. It's not a picture of the song. It's a trace of how you listened.
For more, try meditating with one piece of music or this mark-making meditation for perfectionists.
Abstract art for your walls
The Tuileries prints are my own abstract pieces, inspired by the Jardin des Tuileries. Each is a giclée print on fine art paper, hand-finished and signed, and arrives with a meditation letter.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi