Ice Cream Standoff

 

There was a time when I was fairly aversed to Warholian-style pop art. I used to believe that a photograph shouldn’t be tampered with, but what did I know? I was just caught up in the throes of social convention much like everyone else, it’s what I grew up with, despite my dislike of conformity from a very young age. But then it also took me a long long time before I was willing to allow myself the privilege of calling myself an artist. It’s what other people were, even though I had been passionate about art from the moment I was given paint to play with. Colours, and mixing colours fascinated me. It still does. As a kid I learned very quickly how to achieve any shade of colour that I could imagine, I just knew intuitively how much of each primary colour in addition to black and white I needed to create what I wanted. I didn’t know how unusual that was for a young child.

Being a Synaesthete my world is full of colours, shapes and forms that I know no-one else experiences. In many ways it gives me unique advantages and insights beyond that which might be considered ‘normal’, and I can only imagine that it’s because the neurology of my brain does not differentiate between senses, so that information and experience are interpreted as complete packages, multi-sensory, and multifaceted. I cannot possibly imagine what it is like for sight and hearing to be separate at all, in terms of interpreting the data that come through those individual senses. I don’t know what it’s like not to have olfactory memories, or not see language colourfully dancing on the page, or in the air before me as people speak, or not to experience entire landscapes open up before me as I listen to a piece of music. Not to be able to experience these things would be just plain odd.

Owing to encouragement from friends around me, and to a need to express myself more fully and honestly in more recent times, I have gained the confidence to allow my vibrant internal palette to spill out onto my photographic canvas, and I now dare to call myself a photographer and artist. As much as I love traditional photography, and I like a good straight image, I also get very excited when I’m playing around with the colours, searching for that magical combination that gets the endorphins rushing. I love the excitement of not having the faintest clue what I’m going to end up with, and then being able to share that with others in the vain hope that others may see, even if for just the rarest of moments, what I see.

The original image.

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