From the artist on Pierre BOULEZ

“Boulez seriously studied art before he focused on music. His muse was Paul Klee, a Swiss painter who also inspired me and will be the inspiration for a forthcoming series. Boulez wrote several books that describe the relationship between painting and music, summarized in four rules for transforming an ordered series of notes (a tone row) into music. My paintings in this series figuratively illustrate his rules of composition.”

“These paintings also depict synesthesia—the subjective link between color and musical notes. I selected 12 colors from the light spectrum (pictured below) to correspond with the 12 ascending notes in a tonal row of serial music and then assigned them to the 12 ordered letters in Boulez’ full name. The colors and forms created by his technique create a unique picture of sound—a reverse synesthesia.”

“I met Pierre Boulez when I was a student in Paris in May of 1968 and interacted with him on subsequent occasions. My 2015 book, Paradox and Imperatives in Health Care, is dedicated to Maestro Boulez; he and I were corresponding about his influence on this series just before he died. A segment of PierreBOULEZ#4 is the cover art for my 2020 book, Not What the Doctor Ordered.”

“I am pleased to have done paintings in his honor and hope they bring more attention to his life’s work.”

Other Paintings