Barbara King - Paintings

                      ‘PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION’

                                With Music in Mind

                           Essay for exhibition held in

                            West Norfolk, August 2024

Can a painting be described as a Rhapsody? In music the term is used to describe something irregular in form, an improvisation. So, yes. If George Gershwin can use the colour blue to describe his rhythmic jazzy ‘Rhapsody’ then ‘Rhapsody in Green’ can be used to describe my painting of barleycorn blowing in the wind.

In this exhibition I’m re-examining my paintings with the intention of showing the symbiosis between visual art and music and how there can be a crossover between the two disciplines. There is much president for this for example James McNeill Whistler's beautiful portrait of a ‘pre-Raphaelite’ girl entitled ‘Symphony in White’. Both Joan Miro and Chopin had their ‘Nocturnes’. Debussy had two ‘arabesques’, utilising a word used to describe the intertwining plant and abstract designs of Islamic art for his sinuous and flowing piano melodies. Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (from where I pinched my title) is a piano suite with ten movements each inspired by artworks seen at an exhibition by Viktor Hartman.

And that's before one contemplates 'synaesthesia' whereby the brain engages two or more unrelated senses to process information as with Duke Ellington who claimed to see different colours for the exact same note when played by different musicians or Kandinsky, famous 20th century painter, who could hear colours and would actively set out to paint pictures which would stimulate both aural and optical senses. 

                                                                                                                                         continued>>>>

    

    

(If you would like to be reminded of events please send me your email address and I will add you to the mailing list)

EXHIBITIONS