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Artists
Jan 13, 2023
Artists
Mar 25, 2023
From synesthesia to painting: Interview with Nicole Rudi
Nicole Rudi is a multi-faceted and impressive artist. As a world-renowned concert pianist, she discovered during her life her gift of synesthesia, through which she perceives colors in music. While tones and sounds are sounding, color compositions appear before her inner eye in all their textures and facets, which she then puts on canvas. Through this special form of perception, not only her virtuoso piano playing but, above all, her art, becomes a unique experience.
Why did you decide to pursue an artistic career?
Basically, I have been an artist all my life but just at the piano. I've been playing the piano ever since I can remember and eventually decided on a career as a concert pianist, studying piano at the conservatories in Hanover, Vienna, and Düsseldorf after graduating from high school and gradually building up my pianistic career. At the age of 25, I realized that I was still missing something, another medium to express myself artistically. Synesthesia, on the other hand, has accompanied me all my life – I have always seen colors in music. At that time, the inner urge to bring these heard colors to the canvas drove me to finally realize this. Since then, I have been a passionate artist on two levels.
What inspires your work every day?
Classical music. However, it's not simply the tones, rhythms, and melodies but their depth and the message behind them. It's the richness of emotion it holds, each work in its own unique way. Classical music and playing is not only my passion, it is part of my life and part of my "self-consciousness". Through it, I come into an exchange with my own emotions; I can express myself, perceive myself, feel, and resonate. Basically, music is like an outlet through which emotions are released and expressed.
What themes do you address in your art, and why is that so important to you?
Classical music has an insane power of self-discovery and self-identification. I believe that one can always and at any time find oneself in it, no matter whether it is the actual state or what the soul is longing for at the moment: Hope, strength, confidence, courage, comfort, or a place of refuge. I'm all about that moment of identification where you realize, "This has something to do with me" or "This moves me – this is what I want to be, this is where I want to go." I think those who have ever sat in a concert hall deeply moved with tears in their eyes or have been carried away by an orchestra in such a way know what I am talking about. Nevertheless, this music does not reach everyone at once, which is why I see my task in building this bridge and making the core of the music visually tangible.
Which aspect of the creative process do you like best?
When I get into a state where I forget about space and time and feel like I'm in a trance, my mind shuts down like I'm pushing a button, and I can't control what color I reach for next or what the next step is. It's like an inner driving force that I can't escape once it's there. In that moment, I let myself fall completely and let my intuition guide me fully. I think this state can also be called flow. When I reach this feeling, I know I'm on the right path.
How would you describe your technique?
Since I focus on color sounds and its emotions in my work, I can hardly limit myself to a single technique. It always depends on what musical work I have in mind and how its dynamics, character, and effect resonate with my inner life. In my abstract art style, I am always searching for which technique comes closest to the core and essence of the music I am based on without losing sight of the colors and forms I have already seen. I usually start with a layering technique and work my way through different color gradients; in other works, I work more with texture or use a type of action painting where I let liquid paint run onto the canvas.
Do you start your work with a preconceived concept or idea of what you want to achieve, or is the result unexpected?
When I listen to a musical work, I basically see colors directly in my mind's eye, which has to do with my synesthetic sensation – in principle, I don't really have any control over what colors I see. If, on the other hand, I play the piano piece, some of the details form a bit more for me, and in the process the tempo, the dynamics, and overall the interpretive approach have a big impact on the creation of the artwork. Notes are not equal to notes for me: a phrase can be played completely differently with the same notes, which then suddenly completely changes the color composition in front of my inner eye – because at that moment, I alone am the creator of the musical and artistic interpretation. Everything is determined by the music and the colors that surround and envelop me in that moment like a veil.
How do you know or decide when a work of art is finished?
Maybe the other way around: if I think the artwork is finished, but I run back to the studio several times, look at the painting from all sides and feel an inner urge to want to change something, it can't be finished yet. Some works of art don't let me go for days or weeks and keep me busy around the clock. But then there are works of art that I work on in one go from start to finish, without noticing that several hours have gone by at a stretch. But no matter how many hours or days it takes me, when I drop the brush full of inner satisfaction at the end of a long working process, I know:l – this is it. Only my intuition and gut feeling have any influence on that.
What other creative people, books, music, or films inspire you?
In classical music, there are countless composers who inspire me madly and whose works I consult as models for my art. However, I am most inspired by Alexander Scriabin (19th and 20th century composer), who was also a synesthete and created purely synesthetic music through his theory of tone-color mapping. I myself do not assign a concrete color to each tone – but conclude from sounds to colors; nevertheless, I find this form of perception, as it was strongly pronounced with him, very enriching.
From the visual arts, I am most inspired by Jackson Pollock and Gerhard Richter. The dynamics of Pollock's paintings drew me directly into his spell many years ago, when, without knowing him or his style, I came across an art print in my student days in Hanover. For me, his painting style reflects at its very best an interplay of intuition, planning, and chance – absolutely fascinating in my eyes. Gerhard Richter, on the other hand, is someone who for me best makes visible a world of invisible and incomprehensible reality while reality recedes completely into the background.
Do you have certain rituals or indispensable items in the studio?
Besides the usual tools, I can never be without a sponge and a pack of cloths, which are basically the main tools of my work. My speakers are also indispensable. They are in the background, through which I always run the piece of music that at that moment represents not only the source of inspiration but the foundation of my artwork. This way I can always listen into the music and into myself. Sometimes I also have the sheet music to the piece handy on the table, where I glance at it from time to time.
Do you work with real-life examples, or are your works based mainly on fantasy?
That's an exciting question. My art is fundamentally based on music – and music is emotion and therefore real. But music does so much more, it not only touches us but creates its own world, sometimes a real world, sometimes a dream world, sometimes a fantasy world. But it is exactly this interaction that makes the difference and in the end communicates in my artworks on several levels with me and the viewers. And last but not least, it raises questions about the world and about oneself.
How do you come up with the titles of your artworks?
I often take the titles from the tempo and expression designations from the musical works that form my foundation for the painting. Such designations include "Allegro maestoso," "Largo e mesto," or "Presto energico," to name a few. In these designations, one finds not only the information of how fast or slow something should be played, but, and this is crucial, with which expression – an important factor among many that gives my artworks a significant direction.
Would you tell us more about your current project? What are you working on?
My current series that I am working on is titled "In the Fog", in which I am dealing with works by Franz Schubert and Leoš Janáček, among others. This project represents a journey to one's own state of mind, with emotional highs and lows and the search for one's own expression. In doing so, I present sharp contrasts amidst wailing misty colors, taking viewers on a journey into the depths of their own mental past and present.
Where would you like to exhibit your work and why?
Of course I would like to exhibit in the great museums of this world, but I am much more interested in places where classical music has its home: The Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Philharmonie de Paris, Carnegie Hall New York ... in these places concertgoers could encounter my art, which not only represents the concert programs played, but goes into the depths of music, questions the world and society, and can make the invisible visible –- what a beautiful thought. And in this respect, it is quite irrelevant to me whether I myself am playing on stage or whether other performers or orchestras are as well.
Where do you see your artistic career in five years?
I see my artworks on international exhibitions, on the big concert stages of this world and the wish to bring my art in connection with music to a much bigger audience comes true. But not only that: classical music reaches a larger number of people – especially the younger audience – and the message behind it can become more visible, clearer, and more understandable through my work.