In an era increasingly dominated by algorithmic hyper-speed, the Belfast-born artist Jack Coulter offers a meditative counterweight, presenting a deeply analogue communion between human sensation and canvas. Coulter has chromesthesia, a rare sub-form of synaesthesia, which means his neurological apparatus does not merely process music as emotional stimuli – his auditory and visual cortexes exist in a state of permanent, fluid cross-pollination, translating acoustic frequencies directly into vivid visual phenomena. In his sensorial world, a visceral guitar solo may appear as a flash of vermillion; a resonant bassline as an immediate, tactile density of charcoal black – or, as Pink Floyd might opine, any colour you like.

In his most recent exhibition, With Every Light and With Every Song, hosted at London’s St James’s Gallery 8 via Winsor Birch, Coulter emerged from a three-year period of deliberate, quiet gestation with twenty-five radical new works.  Recent years have brought high-profile cultural intersections – most notably an artwork collaboration with Elton John that raised a quarter of a million dollars for The Elton John AIDS Foundation at auction – but his work remains uncompromisingly raw and abstract. Working entirely on the floor, he bypasses the traditional mediation of the brush, using sticks, scrapers, and his own hands to pour, drag, and manipulate liquid acrylics onto unprimed canvas. Listening to a diverse sonic palette through headphones he effectively transforms the studio into a laboratory of somatic translation, turning sound into colour and form. In this interview with FUTURISTIC DRAGON he discusses his early years and the ways in which his canvases provide evidence of moment where sound collides with human consciousness.

I read that one of your earliest childhood memories was seeing the sound of your own heartbeat reverberating as pulses of colour - can you describe that experience for us? 

That experience was very surreal. Even as a young child, I knew that it wasn’t normal. Though it also felt magical, as many things do when you’re a child. I remember lying down on my side and hearing my heartbeat in my ears as the room was dead silent, and as soon as I heard it and nothing else, the colours began to appear, in pulses right in front of me. I assumed it was normal, to be honest, until later in life, when I learned that it wasn’t. I felt isolated at the beginning as no one understood what I was trying to explain. It’s lucky that my outlet was painting, as in my case, colour is everything.

You have cited your aunt Christine, an abstract printmaker, as an early influence. Looking back, did observing her creative world normalise abstract art for you, making it your native expressive language?

I most definitely think so, yes. It was normal to me seeing that type of work and form, and also mixed with abstract forms I was seeing due to sound. It really did feel like a visual language. It was all that I was seeing in that realm. I think building that visual vocabulary and language from a young age, internally and externally, really led to me painting the way I do. I was also a very emotional kid, hyper self-aware and shy because of this. So, art became something that could be loud and expressive in what I was feeling and experiencing.