Artist With Synesthesia Can See Music As Colorful Paintings

Published 9 years ago

Synesthesia actually lets you paint with the colors of the wind, if it’s loud enough. This rare neurological phenomenon also enables Melissa McCracken to paint music. Synesthesia means that some of your stimuli are joined in unusual combinations. Melissa actuals experiences music with colors and textures. And paints them! Below is a selection of the songs she listened to (links included) and the paintings she painted.

Melissa didn’t know that anything is amiss till she turned 15 and asked her brother which color “C” was (canary yellow). Yes, besides experiencing music as colors, she has a few other synesthesia “symptoms”: “Each letter and number is colored and the days of the year circle around my body as if they had a set point in space. But the most wonderful “brain malfunction” of all is seeing the music I hear. It flows in a mixture of hues, textures, and movements, shifting as if it were a vital and intentional element of each song.”

It begs the question: are her paintings impressionism, or realistic art?

More info: melissasmccracken.com | Facebook (h/t: boredpanda)

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Radiohead – Lucky

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(Listen on Youtube)

David Bowie – Life On Mars?

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(Listen on Youtube)

John Lenon – Imagine

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(Listen on Youtube)

Prince – Joy In Repetition

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(Listen on Youtube)

Jimi Hendrix – Little Wing

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(Listen on Youtube)

Soulive – Interlude II

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(Listen on Youtube)

John Mayer – Gravity

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(Listen on Youtube)

Led Zeppelin – Since I’ve Been Loving You

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(Listen on Youtube)

Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight

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(Listen on Youtube)

Radiohead – Karma Police

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(Listen on Youtube)

Glass Animals – Flip

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(Listen on Youtube)

Airhead – Callow

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(Listen on Youtube)

Martynas Klimas

Writes like a mad dervish, rolls to dodge responsibility, might have bitten the Moon once.

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Tags

acrylic, art, colorful, colorful music, full-post, impressionism, impressionist painting, Melissa McCracken, music paintings, oil, oil paintings, painting, synesthesia, synesthete
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