Chasing Dreams and Shadows Painting

Gayle Midnight is an internationally acclaimed award-winning artist whose work has been featured in countless magazines and publications worldwide. She has exhibited in museums and galleries across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and her art can be found in numerous private collections around the globe. ARTIST STATEMENT Several years back I discovered I have grapheme–color synesthesia, an involuntary process by which the brain utilizes color as a primary means of association and organization of concepts. For as long as I can remember I have always seen the world as combinations of colors. Letters, numbers, words, names: these are all mapped out in my mind within specific color matrices. This unconscious color instinct has always driven my art, but it also extends into other creative realms. Many of my paintings begin with poems. Functioning like sketches, my poems are lyrical abstractions of specific memories, emotions, and experiences, which form the basis of my paintings through deliberate juxtapositions and exaggerations of ingrained color choices. Utilizing the rhythm and meter of words to draw meaning from complex color associations, my poems are the first step towards visually translating the essence of ideas into something tangible. Obsessed with travel and a need to capture the spirit of places and moments, my paintings often feature elaborate organic forms drawn from botanic, marine, and animal references. These images, collected from far-flung corners of the world, are transformed in my imagination then merged with my initial poetic abstractions to become otherworldly forms and surreal dreamscapes.