The six drawings that make up Prelude 20 are visual renderings of the symphonies of the 20^th century Danish composer Carl Nielsen.  Like the other 38 drawings that comprise the Prelude Series, this group is my visual reaction to an aural experience.  Each drawing, measuring approximately 18 by 24 inches, attempts to duplicate visually what I hear in the dynamic orchestral sound of Nielsen’s work, similar to the way a choreographer invents a note book to symbolize the movements of a dance. 

As is true with all my work, I compose my art with a deliberately chosen “alphabet” of shapes, colors and designs.  Geometric forms—especially circles, rectangles, and triangles—handwriting strokes, etching marks made with knives and pencils, smudges created with erasers, along with a bold color palette form my basic music-inspired language.  I use crayons, pencils, and pens because of their simple immediacy and because they form an autobiographical link straight back to my childhood.  Thus my art and the tools used to make that art are my fingerprint, my retina scan, my DNA signature. 

These six drawings are both an interpretation and a synesthetic adaptation; just as a film director might take a novel and turn it into a visual work of art, so I attempt to bring my understanding and reaction to Nielsen’s music onto paper.  I want viewers to “hear” and “see” Nielsen’s sound palette through my imagination and invite them to consider the larger issue about how we all see or hear the things in our lives--the books we read, the music we listen to, the films we watch.  These drawings are part of a long tradition of art that inspires other art, but are also meant to be instigators of larger questions about how we all see and interpret the world around us.