‘Grey Objects Shine Like Crystals’: My Life with Synesthesia

‘Celexa’. All images by Jack Coulter

As a child, even something like staring at the sky was a fluorescent experience. I remember sitting alone one day in my room and the sound of my own heartbeat resonating colour to me. It was ultraviolet, like the glow which is cast from a black light.

I have an idiosyncratic form of synesthesia, so my experience of it differs vastly, but the dominant form is my ability to hear colour. This is known as chromesthesia, or sound-to-colour synesthesia. My sight is iridescent. If I feel overwhelmed or overstimulated, colours appear in front of me. So when I see something beautiful while listening to beautiful music, colours will appear, moving and swirling in rhythm. It’s like a fire of green and blue and red.

My sight is iridescent. If I feel overwhelmed or overstimulated, colours appear in front of me.

It’s a constant form of visual pleasure: even the blandest, greyest objects shine like diamonds or crystals. I have no control over it at all. I see it even when I’m asleep. I have a recurring dream that comes on nights of heavy rainfall. When I hear the downpour, formations of colour surround me, pulsating in time with each rain drop. Having synesthesia is a very intimate, personal experience. Elements of it can be very sexual – like that overwhelming feeling when you first fall in love with someone.

It’s difficult to explain synesthesia to people who don’t have it. It’s impossible to describe the intricacies – like trying to explain the world to someone who has been blind from birth.

Growing up was hard. I thought my colour hallucinations were just daydreams. Everything is new to children, so I never said anything. I was shy and I disappeared a lot to be alone, I still do.

‘Conscivit’

I felt very lost. I was a mystery to my teachers. I could never focus at school, and I could never explain to them what I could see. I didn’t even bother to turn up to my college graduation. I started experimenting with drugs from a very young age – I think in my early teens I went through what most adults do when they hit a midlife crisis – trying to fill a void and work out who they are. At 12, I almost died of severe alcohol poisoning. The doctors said I was lucky to still be alive. It was a very frightening thing for my family to hear.

But then, I discovered art. My aunt was an abstract printmaker – my mum had her work hung up in every room of the house growing up. I remember going to one of her exhibitions as a child. I could hear the paintings. It was her who encouraged me to paint. It changed my life – it was finally a way for me to express what I could see and hear and feel – the psychoanalytical release of abstract art was so freeing. I lost my aunt to suicide the day before I began art college. She is still the greatest influence on my work.

Once it became clear that I had a neurological condition, a lot of things began to make sense to me. Even things as simple as the headaches I would get – they were due to sensory overload.

‘Narcotic’

My tutors at art college would tell me to stop abstract painting and to do more conventional work first – I didn’t want to be trapped within their conventional boundaries. Now I’ve graduated, I use my garage as a workspace. I feel like I can truly express myself. All of my experiences, my visualisations, the sounds that I hear – I try to bring them to life on canvas. Listening to the music I have made myself when I’m painting heightens my experience – I see the colours moving in front of me.

Painting was such a personal expression of my condition, it’s quite overwhelming when I show my work in public. Recently, a young girl contacted me to say that she had come across my work online when she was about to take her own life and it stopped her. I was in bits when she told me: it brought back some painful memories.

I’m 21 now and finally feel very lucky to live with such a rare neurological condition. The thought of living without synesthesia terrifies me. I live in colour. I will die in colour.

@jackbcoulter

www.jackcoulter.com

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