Painting the Music

About a year and a half ago I took up painting—and wow, has it been a journey! I don’t have any formal experience, and that’s sort of the beauty of it. No rules, no ideas, no plans. Just me and my digital painting tablet, trying to make something that’s not bad.

As a composer, I write music which is put into a score and given to the conductor and performers. But before the first page of music there are some additional pages describing the piece, clarifying things, showing lyrics etc. Often enough, the cover to this is simply black font on a white background, but some composers (notably Debussy) have taken great care in selecting cover paintings.

A basic black font on a white background simply doesn’t get my imagination going. So I’ve been trying to capture the music in visual form, and learning how to paint in the process. My hope is that these score covers will eventually accompany the piece while it is performed; but for now I’d like to share some of my favorites.

If you’d like to listen to some of my music while you peruse the paintings, you can find that here. Enjoy!