Purple Chicken in a Ballet Skirt

This work develops from Kandinsky’s theory of color-sound synesthesia and his principle of “internal necessity.” Kandinsky understood purple as the timbre of a reed pipe — a color of inward, vibrating sound rather than outward expansion. The chicken in a ballet skirt, playing a reed pipe with its purple body, becomes the meeting point of color and sound.  When the high notes of a pipe rise, the sound feels as if it begins at the lips, travels up through the breath, and blooms at the crown of the head. I rendered that sound as soft white clouds — fluid, drifting — beginning at the rooster’s crown, flowing down through the tail and pink ballet skirt.
Kandinsky also said purple is the color of tired middle-aged women’s clothing. I see this differently. To me, purple is the color of a body that has passed through time and experience — not the body of youth, but a body that carries the weight of feeling. I painted the rooster in the patterns middle-aged Korean women love — embroidered flowers and small birds, finished with pearl iridescence so the body shimmers like stitched silk