Jack Coulter’s earliest memory is of sitting on the sofa in his childhood home in Belfast, closing his eyes and listening intently to the sound of his heart. “I don’t remember much from being a kid, but that? My God!” he recalls. “It was so silent in the room that my ears homed in on my heartbeat. It’s usually black when you have your eyes closed but I could see colours. I opened my eyes and the colours were there, pulsating in front of me – bright yellowy-orange, then circles of colour, like orbs. My own heartbeat was where all this started.”
Coulter has synaesthesia, a neurological condition that causes sensory crossovers, such as “tasting” colours. Pharrell Williams, Joni Mitchell, Jean Sibelius and Vincent van Gogh are, or were, fellow synaesthetes. In Coulter’s case, he “sees” sound. Since childhood, the Irish artist has translated the colours he sees and the emotions he feels from listening to a song or composition into beautiful abstract paintings. “Everything in my head is colour,” he explains. “If I’m on the street or anywhere, it’s relating all sounds to colour. If I’m overstimulated, I’ll see colours so much more heightened and I’ll see pulsations. That’s day-to-day. But when I’m painting, I see the colours so apparently.”
