Colors are music to her ears
For Pat Mattina, painting is a somewhat noisy process, but one that only she can hear. As notes, sounds, and melodies well up inside her in a sort of private inner symphony, the Framingham artist says, she hears these tones as colors and forms - vibrant visions that she then funnels through her paintbrush and onto canvas.
One note might conjure a deep azure blue arc, another a wash of red and still another the form of an egg. She simply listens and paints what she hears, and it's been that way since she was a kid.
"It's inside me," said Mattina. "The sound has always been within, and I see it when I'm expressing it. It's very hard to describe it. It's like the sound is moving through me as I'm expressing it through the colors."
It has been suggested to Mattina that she may be among the one in 25,000 people estimated to have synesthesia, in which the brain perceives one sensation with two senses. For example, synesthetes might see a shape but also taste it, see a color as well as smell it, or, like Mattina, hear a sound but also see it.
But categorizing her experience or joining the club of musicians and artists known to be synesthetes - which includes Leonard Bernstein, David Hockney, and probably Kandinsky - is of no interest to Mattina.
"I had never heard the word synesthesia until about five years ago, when somebody said there's a word for this," she said when asked about it. "And I haven't pursued it or researched it or had interest in knowing about it since. For me, that doesn't matter. I just trust it. I just know it is. And I just know that it's lovely to have it."
For now, she's also just happy to be listening as she paints again, and to know that the new work she will show at Saxonville Open Studios in Framingham this weekend is once again pulsing with color.
After her artist sister, Barbara Ann Mattina, of Newburyport, died in 2003, Mattina put away her own paints. Her sister had left behind tubes of acrylic in just four colors: black, white, silver, and gold. And as her grief sapped her desire to use her own usual lush, bright hues, Mattina switched to this limited palette.
"Those paints just felt like they needed to be used," said Mattina. "So they became the beginning of my "Shadow light" series. . . . I just fell into the lack of color, but there was still so much light, because of the gold and silver, and because that's what I was seeking, light in the darkness."
Driven by meditations on her loss more than her inner melodies, Mattina emptied her four-colored heartache onto her canvasses.
"Each painting served as a container to hold my grief," she explained in her artist statement when she showed the series at the Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown, where she has permanent representation.
The abstract, emotional images brought some viewers to tears. But now Mattina's most recent work offers not grief but a shared catharsis.
"Eventually, color returned," said Mattina, who tends to speak of her artwork as something she experiences rather than creates. "First came very soft pinks and very soft blues, and the work now is pretty bright. I'm really excited. It just sort of all returned in this very brilliant form. And it's so much about the sound, the sound of that inner experience, of that healing and how you express it with color."
Thirteen artists including Mattina will open their doors at Saxonville Studios this weekend. Paintings, jewelry, photographs, and mixed media, as well as small works and gifts for the holidays will also be on show by artists Colene Abramson, Patience Epstein, Lynette Haggard, Anne Gilson Haney, Cynthia Lincoln, Edith Loring-Thomas, Peggy McClure, Emily Rubinfeld, Rosalie Ripaldi Shane, Denise Simon, Rich Simon, and Willard Traub.
Saxonville Studios Holiday Open Studios will be held Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., at 1602B Concord St., in Framingham's Saxonville section. Free. Directions and artist info at saxonvillestudios.com. View Mattina's work at lymaneyerart.com.
SACRED ELLINGTON: Of all the masterful music that jazz legend (and known synesthete) Duke Ellington penned, the pieces he felt were his most important are the ones that are least performed. His three "sacred concerts" require so many musicians that they are often too difficult to present. But this weekend, the Franklin Performing Arts Company will present these masterworks, which weave together elements of jazz, classical, choral music, spirituals, gospel, and blues. With narration by WGBH's Eric Jackson ("Jazz With Eric in the Evening") and featuring soloists Monica Hatch and Paul Broadnax, Steve Massey will conduct Boston's Kenny Hadley Big Band and the Franklin troupe's Jazz Choir for this ambitious event. Much of the same crew performed this show 10 years ago and garnered a nod from the Globe as one of 1998's top 10 jazz events in Greater Boston. "The Sacred Music of Duke Ellington," 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Horace Mann Auditorium, Franklin. Tickets: $20; students/seniors $15. 508-528-2887, fpac.tripod.com.
BERGMAN ET AL: The Nordic Film series is back. This season's free Scandinavian film screenings in West Newton run from an Ingmar Bergman classic ("Persona") to a 2005 Norwegian hit, "Opphav Ukjent" ("Origin Unknown"). Held in the Scandinavian Living Center, the series aims to share northern European culture as well as bring together the assisted-living center's elderly residents and outside film buffs for a night of Nordic fun and refreshments. All films have English subtitles. Tonight's feature at 7 is "Persona," Bergman's 1966 masterpiece that stars Liv Ullman as an actress who suddenly stops speaking. Next up on Dec. 6 is a Danish action comedy, "Flickering Lights," which follows four Copenhagen gangsters trying to start a new life in the countryside. On Jan. 3, a Swedish drama, "The Emigrants," tells the story of a young farming couple driven to move to America. On Jan. 19, in "Origin Unknown," a Jewish psychiatrist raised by Catholics seeks the truth about his real mother. Nordic Films at the Scandinavian Living Center, a monthly series at 206 Waltham St., West Newton. 781-893-3794, slcenter.org.
WEAVING'S THEIR WAY: Nearly 400 New England weavers belong to the Weavers' Guild of Boston, and starting tonight several dozen of their accomplished members will show their wares in Weston. The guild's annual juried exhibition and sale packs the Josiah Smith Barn with handmade table linens, scads of scarves, clothing, blankets, bags, coverlets, rugs, and Judaica, as well as dolls and ornaments. Artistry ranges from the very traditional to experimental pieces made of newer fibers including tencel, bamboo, and soy silk. And you just may learn a thing or two. Artists will discuss their techniques and an accompanying display explores the early Colonial weaving pattern called overshot. The Weavers' Guild of Boston annual Handweaving Exhibit and Sale, 5 to 9 p.m. tonight; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow; and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Josiah Smith Barn, 358 Boston Post Road, Weston. 508-870-0468, weaversguildofboston.org.
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