All images © 2023 Deb Strong Napple
Deb Strong Napple is a synesthetic artist who interprets the sounds and colors of the landscape into abstract compositions in her etchings, woodblock prints, and her paintings. She experiences synesthesia while painting en plein air, when colors become sounds for her. This transforms her painting practice from a purely visual experience to one that is seen AND heard.
Deb graduated from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied Printmaking and Painting, and from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, where she earned a BA in Creative Writing.
Deb was born and raised in New Jersey, and has since lived in Tidewater, VA; Guam; the Washington, DC area; and the Philadelphia region. Since 2015 she lives and creates full time in Flagstaff, AZ. She now explores the deserts of the Southwest with her sketch kit and paint box.
Deb has received awards and residencies from the Woodmere Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the American Color Print Society, Petrified Forest National Park, Wupatki National Monument, and others. She has successfully completed large-scale commissions for institutions and individuals, and her work is held in corporate and private collections nationwide. Hospitals and health care facilities seek out Deb’s art, using the power and drama of her work for its healing qualities.
Artist Statement
My art has always been about a very specific type of transformation-synesthesia.
When I sketch en plein air I experience synesthesia-the colors of the landscape become actual sounds to me. On a bright day the sun might sound like high C played on a silver flute. Or the shadow under a juniper might reverberate like a low, flat note. This experience transforms my painting experience from a purely visual language to one that I see AND hear.
In my studio, printmaking allows me to create a poetic rhythm using shapes etched and carved into plates and blocks along with layers of transparent ink. I use the colors and shapes that I find in the landscape to create abstract images that reveal the power, drama, and emotion of my inquiry into the natural world.
Like poetry says the unsayable, my abstractions reveal the unseeable. Like the power barely contained in a sunrise, or the sound of a color floating over the desert. The power and sense of smallness looking out at a horizon that goes forever.
My prints transform the sometimes confusing experience of synesthesia into a poetry that dances on the paper. They are part of my “New Language” series. In them I am asking … “If colors are nouns and shapes are verbs, what will this new poetry say?” How can I use this visual language to describe the drama of hearing color in the landscape?
All images © 2023 Deb Strong Napple