Mondegreen Painting

Mondegreen is when someone misunderstands or misinterprets words in a song when you mishear the lyrics. For a Deaf person like me, I try to hear the beats and the rhythm of a song and I often mishear or misunderstand the meaning of a piece of music. I try to connect with people who can hear about music and it often leaves me feeling exposed or embarrassed because I hear things differently to others. This painting is a true reflection of how I feel, on the one side you see the visual representation of what I hear in the music, on the other side is a visual representation of perhaps what music sounds like to others. When I try and communicate about the music or songs that I am listening to, I often feel like we are on different wavelengths, we aren’t speaking the same language. It was so fascinating to me to think that it isn’t only Deaf or hard of hearing people that mishear things in music or songs - it happens to people who have their full hearing. Wow, Mondegreen is such an interesting concept to me. In the painting I wanted to show the music clearly in the colours on an almost white background to represent the silence, the hands are cut off as there is no signing or using Auslan for this person. They are confused, vulnerable and naked - feeling exposed and embarrassed when they learn of the mistakes or things they have misheard, but they are not the only ones this happens to. Mondegreen. It happens a lot, apparently.