Artist Statement

“Much of our mental life is unconscious, based on processes alien to logic…”
—Gerd Gigerenzer, Director at Max Planck Institute for Human Development

My work strives to portray the inner life. Sometimes a yearning that is unknowable in words can be realized by making an artifact. Frequently, it is a related memory that creates the bridge between ideation and work of art.

How I work

Making art presents practical considerations that ground the work and make it accessible. I plan my work in advance, testing materials and formats until I arrive at a satisfactory combination. For my paintings, I like working fast, laying down multiple layers in quick succession.

Current works

". . .the seers are invariably most minute in their description of the precise tint and hue of the colours. They are never satisfied, for instance, with saying "blue", but will take a great deal of trouble to express or to match the particular blue they mean . . ." 


—Sir Francis Galton (1883) "Inquiries into Human Faculty"

Looks Like Snow examines my life-long experience of colour | grapheme synesthesia. For me, all words, letters and numbers have highly specific colours as an additional level of their meaning. I am simultaneously aware of the external color, black text for example, and also the internal, synesthetic colour.

The synesthetic colours are very beautiful as they shimmer with a kind of emotional luminosity. Sometimes an equivalent colour in the external world is elusive.

The project Looks Like Snow began in 2003. My mother also experiences colour | grapheme synesthesia and we spoke about it, comparing our differing colours for the names of people in our family. I wished that I had a swatch book of my alphabet, so I would not have to describe the colours in words.

I began documenting my palette by making an artist’s book. I discovered I was unable to observe the colour of a letter in my mind's eye while attempting to match my paint to it. It feels like trying to be two places at once.

Instead, I match to the memory of a colour. One of the great pleasures of this project has been found in building an alphabet of colour experiences to remember while I am painting.

Artist Resume

Education: Fine Art

2003 – 2006: Studies in Painting, Drawing and Artists' Books, Toronto School of Art, Toronto, Ontario
2001 – 2003: Drawing and Painting, private classes with Frank Pio, Ph.D, Toronto, Ontario

Education: Design

1980 Diploma Graphic Design, Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Exhibition Record

2003: Group show "Naked Spines". Artists' Books by students of Toronto School of Art
W.A.R.C. Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

2009: Sunnyside Beach Juried Art Show & Sale, Toronto, Ontario

Affiliations

American Synesthesia Association
Association of Graphic Designers of Ontario

Professional Experience

1993 – Current: Sally Hewson Design, Toronto, Ontario
Owner of a communications design consultancy.

What is Synesthesia?

In synesthesia two or more senses are automatically and involuntarily coupled such that a voice, for example, is not only heard, but also felt, seen, or tasted. Synesthesia is a physical experience of the brain, not the product of imagination or learning. It differs from metaphor and deliberate artistic contrivances such as coloured music or son et lumière. Some couplings are much more common than others: sound–sight synesthesia (coloured hearing) is plentiful, whereas combinations involving taste and smell are rare. The most frequent synesthesia joins colour to days of the week, then letters and numbers. —Richard E. Cytowic

Research

The Synesthesia Battery This battery of tests provides a standard battery of questions, tests and scoring. This test is available to the whole community of researchers and synesthetes for their use in making scientific progress.

Richard E. Cytowic is best known for rediscovering synesthesia in 1980 and returning it to the scientific mainstream where it is now seen as crucial to basic theories of how the brain works.

The Synaesthesia Research Group is based at the University of Waterloo for the purpose of studying all aspects of synaesthesia.

Groups

The American Synesthesia Association (ASA) The ASA attempts to promote and provide a means for the people who experience and/or study synesthesia to be in contact with each other. As part of its educational mission, the ASA provides information to scientists, health professionals, academicians, researchers, artists, writers, musicians, lay persons and people who experience synesthesia.

The Synesthesia List™ is an international e-mail forum, founded in 1992, for connecting synesthetes with each other and with those researching synesthesia. It is maintained, monitored and edited by Sean A. Day. Currently, there are more than 660 members, from all over the world.

UK Synaesthesia Association The Association brings scientists, researchers, students and synaesthetes together and provides verifiable and reliable information regarding the condition for the media and any other interested parties.