Blog #1 — Seeing Sound: How Synesthesia Shapes My Art

I have always created from a place that feels a little different than the world around me. Before I understood what synesthesia was, I thought everyone saw colors the moment a sound appeared. I assumed it was normal to hear someone’s voice and immediately see a mix of blue, moss green, or soft brown inside my mind. I assumed that the quiet hum of cars was supposed to glow in muted orange. I assumed that keyboards were meant to shimmer in pale blue.

Only later did I realise that this was not how most people experience sound. And that realisation changed everything.

Synesthesia is a sensory crossing. In my case, sound turns into color without choice or effort. It is automatic and constant, always active in the background. When I finally discovered that this had a name, it felt both comforting and isolating. Comforting because I understood myself better. Isolating because it is nearly impossible to explain what it feels like.

Art became the place where I could translate that inner world into something visible.

When I create a portrait, I do not start with a face or a story. I start with an atmosphere. A color. A feeling that appears the moment I hear a sound or think of a memory. My images are not meant to look realistic. They carry distortion, tension, softness, or blurriness because that is how inner experiences appear to me. They are psychological portraits shaped by emotion rather than physical features.

Sometimes the colors come before I even know who the figure will become. Sometimes a shape appears before I understand what it means. But eventually it settles into something that feels true. Something I recognise. Something that feels like a quiet piece of the world inside my mind.

Creating art this way is both intimate and freeing. Intimate because I am revealing something that usually stays hidden. Freeing because it makes my inner perception visible to others, even for a moment.

I hope that through this blog, you can step into my process with me. Not to fully understand synesthesia, but to feel how it shapes the way I create. To see a little bit of the world the way I do.

This is the beginning of sharing that journey with you.

Thank you for being here.

Yenny Schuster