Song Art

When the inner artist and voice researcher meet….

My journey of creating the Siren Song Medicine Images- a genre of what I'd call "Song Art".

Below I share my creative process, and the joy of bringing an image from my mind's eye to the material world.

When it comes to art, ever since I was a young girl, whenever I've considered an artwork, it has always been on the basis of "do I want to step into it? To merge with it?" And that is always how I approach what I create: what can I invite others to step into? To merge with?

As a researcher of singing, I've always had an urge to be "inside song". An urge to be right in the middle of it. Tones around me. The sensation of harmony. Dissolving into vibration.

As a visual artist, I've longed to see voice as it is being emitted in the world. Our Voice comes from deep within and is then suddenly outside of us- remaining invisible to our naked eye.

Song Art can gift us the sight to see the world of vibration.

My song art started with an impulse to see what I felt, and what research confirmed for me was happening during sounding.

"The delicate vibrations of the voice record and register themselves in several different ways"- Margaret Watts Hughes, singer/scientist

Voice Figure: Tree Form (1891) Created by Margaret Watts Hughes using her singing voice and the Eidophone, an instrument she invented to make sound visible. From The Eidophone: Voice Figures Geometrical & Natural Forms Produced by Vibrations of the Human Voice.

Voice Figure: Seaweed or Landscape Form (1891) Created by Margaret Watts Hughes using her singing voice and the Eidophone, an instrument she invented to make sound visible. From The Eidophone: Voice Figures Geometrical & Natural Forms Produced by Vibrations of the Human Voice.

The research showed magnificent pictures of voice, of song, of a sonic moment captured for our eyes to see. What if we could also see singers singing these shapes into being? Uniting the beauty of voice with the voicer?

I started roughly creating sketches, permitting myself to draw my inner knowing and visions, which opened a portal of possibility.

To move from the images I'd seen in illustrations of Sirens and Mermaids to something I got to co-create with visually, felt ecstatic.

My first sketches were of the timeless pull I feel from the "woman in the water who sings", a presence that feels ancient. When her mouth is near the water's surface, we start seeing the ripples emitted from her song.

Next, I sketched some mermaids in water singing…the waves and ripples from voice became one…

In my research, I had been entranced by John William Waterhouse's painting of Echo and Narcissus, with Narcissus' mouth close to water. I felt there was more to this mythical scene and I drew my version of it.

Next, I wanted to see the complexity of voice, of the patterns beyond the ripples on the surface, and I allowed more intuitive drawings of "what would my song look like?". This opened the door for the wildness of voice.

It was like a song portrait…and seeing it, more of my wild song fell into place.

After this, I was ready to play with painting and highlighting the song patterns. I had to consider how to paint a half-submerged face and painting this scene felt very meditative…like I was in it, singing it, as it came into being.

Imagining being in the wide ocean and singing a song at night, my song illuminating the surroundings. Light and water meeting through song.

After a few weeks, I felt called to learn how to draw sacred geometry. I picked the lotus of life as my first shape, a form that felt deeply connected to creation.

I put this geometry in water ….

After I learned how to draw the lotus of life, it was time I learned to draw mermaids and sirens…I studied photographs from mermaiding and from films showing mermaids and sirens…I let my intuition guide the colours I chose, which went with an otherworldly scale….

I felt called one day to put the sacred geometries and sirens and mermaids together. I tried many different combinations of mermaids and mandalas, of mermaids and ripples…

There was such a thrill I felt in this part of the process of "entering" and being inside song more fully. Truly immersed in it, in the vibrations in water, in the enchanting act of singing. Singing in water truly feels like being inside singing. I learned that light plays a big role in making the visions come more alive, and it is true, there is an ancient radiance in our voices…

I kept zooming in on these images, wanting to get as close as possible to the moment sound enters water…to the moment the patterns are revealed, to proximity with the magic moment of the open mouth emitting patterns.

After a few months of playing this way, and also being inspired to sound them (you can listen to the mermaid voicescapes here), I saw in my mind's eye a profile of a woman and her sounds visually playing out from her singing…This may be a mermaid, a siren, or just a singer in the water showing us her song. I was so happy to receive and create this vision. It felt like the epos of my research on singing, water, illumination of vocal enchantment.

I now have it on my voice altar, to remind me on a daily basis of the magical moment every time our breath, our sound, enters the universe.

I’ve learned that when I witness my voice, its weaving power becomes tangible.

I was so excited to create and then look at these artworks, for they lit a fire within my own voice. I hope they do so for you too.

In loving devotion and service to our voices,

Sophia

May the creative research process of seeing our song with water continue