On the interplay between silence and music in the creative process

And some pages from my art journal

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

I’ve been enveloped in silence in the studio since quite some time now: roughly a year or two? There’s a peaceful and often grounding quality to it: to listening to the susurration of the paper, the quiet swish of paint strokes, the scratching of color pencils on paint, the metallic rasp of cutting out pieces of paper, interspersed with the thumps and bumps from the neighborhood, and the quiet purring of my cats, Simba and Loki.

I’ve listened to the occasional podcast or turned on some music now and then, of course, but more often than not, I have chosen to work in silence. The lack of sensory input is what my nervous system seems to need, bombarded as it is with a steady stream of information — work emails, newsletters, articles, social media, all the different rabbit holes I fall into…

The quietude in my studio gives my mind the space it needs to breathe. I can feel the threads of information slowly dropping away as I immerse myself in paints and mark making and simply responding to what is happening on the page.

During this time, the silence slowly worked its magic on me, getting me to re-examine my relationship with social media; with how much time I spend mindlessly scrolling versus actively engaged and reading; with the quality of information that I am exposing myself to. And as the extraneous noise fell away, the music slowly started returning into the studio.

For now, it’s music that soothes me, songs from the 80s and 90s that are already a part of me, songs that feel like coming home. This is music that is so familiar to me that it feels almost like the silence, in that it makes no sensory demands on my still-tired neurons.

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One of the catalysts for the return of music in the studio was this composition by

Fog Chaser

, which includes field recordings from the wilds of central Oregon — I don’t remember hearing any music that includes nature sounds {and no, I don’t think the nature sounds videos on YouTube could be called musical compositions}.

It felt like the kind of musical score you could use if you were shooting an art-house style clip of a woman quietly making and drinking her first cup of coffee, with the sunlight gently streaming in through the window. I immediately knew that I wanted to paint to this music.

I think this piece captures a sense of quiet solitude, just as dawn is breaking on a forested path...

I’ve since painted to two more of Fog Chaser’s compositions.

The art journal spread below was inspired by Soft Season.

Though it started with a feeling of airy hopefulness, which seemed more suited to the music, my own anxieties eventually took over, so I did a second page (below) while listening to the same composition, to reclaim some hope for myself. You can see how these two pages, despite not being tied together by color, still tell a story of their own.

And the final piece, which is my personal favorite, was created in response to Slow Bloom. I had been feeling blue for about a week before I heard this composition. But when I heard this piece of music, it burst through the fog that had been weighing me down. I could feel the melancholy lifting away, and by the end, I had a huge smile on my face.

I wanted to capture that feeling of lightness, so I spent a weekend making a whole bunch of watercolor flowers, butterflies, and birds, and working on this painting. I think it really captures the lightness and hope that I felt the first time I heard this composition.

If you’re on Instagram, you can watch this short reel, set to a little clip on the importance of doing things by hand, to see a bit of the process of creating this art journal spread.

I hope you enjoyed this look into my art journal and my creative influences.

I’d love to know: do you prefer to work in the silence of your studio, or do you have a playlist of favorite songs or perhaps a favorite podcast that you listen to while you create? Share your favorites with me in the comments, or simply reply to this e-mail and let’s talk there!

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