Seeing Music in Colours - Melissa McCracken

26 year old Melissa McCracken is a painter with a rare neurological phenomenon called Synesthesia which affects approximately 4% of her home state of Missouri. Melissa's form of her Synesthesia is called Chromesthesia meaning she spontaneously and involuntarily sees colours when she listens to music. Melissa found out about her condition when she was just 16 years old. She tells a story of how she was with her friend and wanted to change her ringtone and how she had a blue phone and she wanted an "orange" ringtone to match because they are complimentary colours. She said that after she'd said that her friend seemed very confused which caught her by surprise. McCracken stated that it was then when she realised that she was different from others.

When asked about how she came to start painting her favourite songs, Melissa stated "Colour seemed like the most natural thing for me to paint because I've always loved it, so I wanted to go down an abstract route. I started painting memories from notable times in my life and thinking of the specific songs that related to them. People seemed interested in my synesthesia so it became my core subject". There are certain music genres that Melissa actually finds prettier than others. For example she finds that funk music is a lot more colourful as it includes lots of different instruments and melodies and rhythms creating a highly saturated effect. 

As an experiment, McCracken met with another person who has synesthesia to listen to the same song and see how their paintings differed from each other. She said that they both painted "Little Wings" by Jimi Hendrix and that both their pieces looked really different, proving how subjective synesthesia is. 

I think that after researching into Melissa's work I now have a much richer understanding of a particular way in which the senses can work with art. Finding her work has really helped influence me to broaden my horizons when looking at the senses side of art. Although I have already done an experiment similar to what Melissa does, I think that possibly trying it again but maybe with an extra party added so we can compare how we perceived the feeling of the same song.

David Bowie, "Life on Mars."

Prince, "Joy in Reception."