Melanie Bethke
My work involves exploring ways to give visual expression to the experience of listening to music. I began my experimentation with the link between music, expressive lines, rhythmic patterns, and color when I painted live jazz and dance performances. During this time my investigations centered on how to interpret the energy of music, the performance, and the spirit of the audience in purely abstract, visual terms.
I continue to explore the synthesis of sound and color: the sonic and the visual. The process is very important to the development and evolution of the work. Repetitive play of the same piece of music has led to a wide array of painting studies while listening to a broad and diverse collection that includes: Miles Davis, East Indian Raga, Radiohead, and Mahler all of which elucidate a variety of feelings and structures that inspire the creation of new ways to express musical elements, a translation of rhythm into beautiful ‘narrative line and color. My focus is the depiction of a particular piece of music or the use of music as a tool and its influence on me while in the throws of the creative process and the physical act of painting. I purposely select music based on rhythmic and tonal quality so that I can channel line and color based on the character and timbre of each piece of music.
Underlying color energy illuminates my work. This exploration led to the Perpetual Motion Series: an exploration of the use of line and color to create rhythm and convey the perception of constant movement. These works are all painted on round canvases because the circular shape represents the central theme of the series with its endless, perpetual line. The synthesis of energies that occur between the sonic and the visual reveals the unseen sound experience. I capture music’s fleeting moments and impose its overall impressions into the painting. Each painting takes form through the accretion of layers of paint, counteracted by scraping or the use of resists, and by drawing upon the work with miniature power tools. The language of music is revealed on the panel via the dynamic synthesis/interaction of sinuous lines, shapes, patterns, and color fields.
