Seeing the Music
Artist in Residence: Mark Wingrave
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Visual Art teacher: Hannah Rother-Gelder
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Visual Art teacher: Hannah Rother-Gelder
Introducing the project:
“I heard a song on the radio and it goes like…”
We have all told our friends about a piece of music we like, and when we do, we effortlessly blend description with feelings and associations. Music has an immediate impact on us, which is often profound and quite mysterious. This project aims to get the students to respond to, and work with, four very different pieces of music over five weeks.
Students will produce a series of painted and collaged works which will enable them to examine and reflect on their experience of listening to music. They will consider four different approaches to painting/picture making which employ: improvisation, the objective/optical qualities of colour, the emotive power of colour, and planning and composing with colour. Students will work with a range of paints and ink on different scales large and small.
Week One
This week we introduced the students to the idea of listening to music and responding creatively to music using brush and ink. We identified and demonstrated a range of marks and lines using a selection of brushes, enabling students to express the sounds, rhythms and mood of the music they were listening to.
They were asked to listen to the music with their eyes closed and to choose a brush that best suited their response to the music. The choice of brush and brush size structured and influenced the quality of line produced.
Students were so enthusiastic and loved the links between music and mark-making, but realised very quickly that the challenge was more difficult than they first imagined.
Students found they were working in an area that is somewhere between a language and mark-making. They developed a foundational understanding of abstract art and a deeper understanding of the dream of abstract artists, to make the ‘invisible visible’: to create a work of art using the senses as inspiration.
Week Two
This week students created a series of four paintings responding to four very different pieces of music. They were asked to choose three main colours for each of the four paintings and to respond to the music using these colours, one dominant and the other two less dominant, and to think about how the colours relate to each other.
Mark introduced the students to the understanding that colour never stands alone and he demonstraed how colours influence each other by holding different coloured papers behind a bright orange pumpkin.
We explored the “weight” of colour through Kandinsky’s work,
“Improvision 31, Sea Battle”
“The students listened intently to four pieces of music and produced some outstandingly considered work. Some ran free with swathes of watery paint and others exercised great control pushing lines across the page. A group of boys broke out a rhythm punctuating the page with a series of dots while a number of girls conjured up jewel-like images.
Attending to the task of listening and simultaneously reflecting on the music in order to produce a painting is an exciting and rewarding task. Many students produced surprizing and insightful work.” Mark Wingrave
Student Reflections:
The music made me dizzy and my painting was going round and round. Rueban
It felt I was falling down from the sky and my painting became the sky. Hannah
The music was loud and quiet. My painting showed the loud and quiet. Kiarna
One of the pieces of music felt like a shining crystal and it showed in my painting. Celina
When I listened to the music I closed my eyes and I saw a shape and I really liked the shape. Kiarna
I found my brush was often going down the page because the music was soft and when it was loud the brush went up the page again. James
The music was very different – I let my hand move by itself across the page. Eliza
Week 3
This week students listened to Schoenberg’s “Five Orchestral Pieces”. They were asked to respond to the music in terms of the feelings it evoked in them. Before they began, Mark asked the students to ascribe a feeling to a range of emotions; happy/sad, calm/anxious, distance/closeness. He then elicited from them a range of possible colours that conveyed these states.
This week students used high quality Art Spectrum Gouache paints and were given the opportunity to use both a range of colours and to mix their own colours.
Students painted what they heard and emotionally responded to the music through their choice and range of colour.
They explored the idea that we all have our own ideas and feelings about colours. They examined their emotional responses to the music and linked these emotions to a colour. They told a story about the music through the medium of painting.
Student Reflections:
“I felt calm when I was painting” Lucy
“The music made me scared and nervous. I used black, purple, blue and orange. Sometimes I used circles.” Lily
“It felt like the sea. The sea was calm and then there were big waves in the sea.” Harvey
“The music felt like it came from France. It made me want to paint up and down.” Tin
“Listening to the music helped me to paint. The music went into us and came out the paint brush.” Gen
“The type of music was good because it changes a lot and everyone did different things.” Filip
“When I heard the music I knew what colour to use. I saw colours when I heard the music.” Clara
“I was happy about my work. The shapes were in my head and the music was going in different ways, in patterns and swirls.” Lucy
Students were asked to think of a word that best described how they felt when they were painting:
Delightful
Playful
Colourful
Light
Danger
Stunned
Happy
Excellent
Deep
Special
Seeing the Music
Artist in Residence
Mark Wingrave
Week 4
This week students were asked to consider a different abstract painting, The Song of Vowels by Joan Miro.
They were introduced to the idea of colour as light.
Students created the first stage of their work responding to the music by Eric Satie, Piano Works. They worked with colour, creating a page of shapes inspired by the music and the Miro work.
Their focus was to create a series of shapes varying in size using a range of colours. (Next week students will cut and collage the shapes onto black paper and use white pen to create a series of marks and line work.)
This week it became an exercise in skill development and learning how to be controlled and thoughtful when painting the simple shapes. Students focussed on manipulating their brush to produce carefully painted edges and carefully considered shapes.
Their challenge was to create the shapes on white paper knowing next week they are to place them on a black background. This made the students consider the use of colour and its intensity and transparency.
Although this appears to be a simple exercise, it isn’t easy to paint and control the outcome of smooth curved edges. It requires concentration and technical dexterity.
“This week, instead of listening to several pieces of music the students listened to one piece only. This created an ambient field of sound to work with. Consequently, it entailed less intervention on behalf of the teacher and more student freedom. Such a situation can be daunting for students, so we set parameters for them to work within, based on the Miro work. They restricted their vocabulary of marks to circles, ovals and long ellipses while concentrating on colour intensity and giving clean edges to shapes. We also examined the role the thumb, index and second fingers play in holding and controlling the brush.”
Mark Wingrave
Student Reflections:
When I was painting circles and shapes I felt calm. The strength of the colours in the palette made me decide what colours to choose.” Harper
“What I painted depended on the music and what I felt. I tried to express the music on the page. When it was loud I made big circles and when it was quiet, I made small circles.” Eliza
“I turned corners with my brush by putting force on one side of the brush rather than the other side.” James
“I was spinning my brush to make a perfect circle” Selma
Seeing the Music
Artist in Residence
Mark Wingrave
Week 5
This week the students made work inspired by Miro’s painting, Song of Vowels using coloured forms and white pen on black paper. This was the culmination of our five weeks work exploring music and visual art.
In the previous weeks the students used brush and ink and paint and this week they took their explorations into collage and line work.
Today the students cut out the oval and circular shapes that they had painted last week and pasted them onto pieces of black A3 paper. Then they drew dashes and lines with white pens. We modelled cutting clean continuous curves by slowly feeding the shapes into the scissors jaws. The students fully exploited the freedom of collage, which allows them to view a complete composition prior to fixing it with glue. Mark Wingrave
The students worked independently this week. They have become attuned to music becoming a part of their experience of creating painted and collaged works.
Students only cut out the shapes they needed to make the collage. It wasn’t necessary to use all the painted shapes from last week. This was the first decision they made in the process of creating the collage. The next decision involved the placement of the shapes. Finally, students used white pens to create marks that completed their response to the music. The whole process was brought together as a result of listening and responding to the music using the medium of the visual arts.
The beauty of collage as a medium to work with is the students are able to experiment with the arrangement of paper and shapes before they glued them.
There are many different kinds of lines students used to complete the art work. They let the music determine the character of the lines they created. There are many words that describe the lines; lines can provoke feelings.
Students noticed how the white lines changed their piece…
Working within these parameters, colour and white on a single shade, enabled the students to perceive and weigh colour as light against a continuous black ground. During the lead in phase of today’s task some students imagined the colours as fireworks and the white lines as lightning or in one case thunder. Mark Wingrave
Students discovered that creating their art work became all about listening to the music.
Today’s session brings to a close the five week project “Seeing Music”. The students have listened attentively to music, identified and reflected on its structures and moods and applied these insights to exploring painting’s emotive power. While feeling in painting is undeniable it becomes quite elusive, butterfly like when we try to pin it down with words. But what is crystal clear is the students’ achievement and sense of adventure. Mark Wingrave
We thank Mark for embarking on this residency where students have had the opportunity to understand and explore the relationship between visual art and music. Under the guidance of Mark they have developed a foundational understanding of abstract art and a deeper understanding of the dream of abstract artists, to make the ‘invisible visible’ and to create a work of art using the senses as inspiration.
Final Student Reflections:
I learnt that music can have different patterns in it. Harvey
Loud, soft, loud, soft and then a pattern. I felt calm and know how to make art out of music now. Lucy
I learnt that music had very loud sounds. It made my work feel very comfortable. Arturo
The music sometimes made me very tired because I was so relaxed. It was close to dreaming. Isabella
The music makes you know where to put the shapes on your paper. Filip
The paintbrush makes your dots, lines and circles when you listen to the music. Luca
The music goes into your body and out through your hands to show you what to do. Hannah
I learnt that you don’t always cut the actual shape. You can make shapes with scissors from the painted shapes. Gen
Music helped me decide where to put the shapes. Evie
Music can help you cut out the shapes and music can also tell you where to put the shapes. Aidan
Hannah Rother-Gelder ©
