BEYOND THE WINDOW
An exploration of sound, music, abstraction and painting.
The beginning: listening to something I couldn't see
BEYOND THE WINDOW began with a sound recording.
I was inside, with the window blinds closed. I could hear what was happening outside, but I couldn't see it.
I was interested in the sounds themselves, rather than their sources. What I heard existed independently of what I might have seen. Without visual references, I was free to interpret those sounds in my own way.
The recording became the starting point for a creative process that would eventually involve music, painting and installation.
I didn't know what the finished work would look like. In fact, at that stage, I didn't know there would be any paintings at all.
Turning sound into music
The next stage was to create music in response to the recording.
I wasn't interested in reproducing the sounds or creating musical imitations of what I had heard. Instead, I wanted to interpret the recording through musical instruments.
The resulting composition was an abstraction of the original sound.
There is no conventional pop or rock song structure. The music develops on its own terms, allowing space for the listener to form their own interpretation.
More recently, as the paintings reached completion, I returned to the music and made some final adjustments.
Interestingly, these changes were largely about removing things.
I took away musical tracks, creating more space within the composition. The music could breathe a little more. In a sense, this was a response to the simplicity I had discovered through the paintings.
The finished music does not contain the original sound recording, nor does it contain artificial sounds intended to recreate it.
The sound recording was the inspiration. The music is the interpretation.
From music to painting
Alongside the music, I began exploring how the original sound recording could be interpreted visually.
Using a method I developed to transform sound and music into abstract visual forms, I created a series of images that I call plates.
These became the starting point for the paintings.
The original plates were visually complex. I began a process of reducing them, removing information and simplifying their structures, sometimes repeatedly, until I arrived at compositions that interested me.
What remained were lines, curves, intersections and spaces. Although increasingly abstract, their origins could still be traced back through the plates to the original recording.
They were the result of a process of abstraction.
The painting itself introduced another layer of interpretation. My choice of materials, textures, colours and methods of applying paint became my own response to the original sounds and the visual structures they had produced.
What began as a recording of an unseen scene had become something entirely different.
Nine paintings, one installation
I decided to create nine individual paintings, working with acrylic and oil-based materials on lining paper.
Each painting was developed separately, using the reduced visual plates as references.
Although I was working from visual references, I was relying on my own judgement to reproduce the relationships between the lines, curves and intersections.
I was surprised by how accurately I maintained the proportions from one painting to the next, even though I painted each painting to be a standalone piece.
As the paintings came together, the relationships between them became increasingly apparent. Curves appeared to continue across separate sheets, and the individual compositions began to suggest a larger structure.
It was this discovery that led me to present the nine paintings as a single installation.
I hadn't simply set out to reproduce one large image divided into nine squares. I had painted nine individual works, each with its own identity, and discovered that together they could become something more.
The original recording had passed through several stages of interpretation and reduction, eventually emerging as a physical installation.
A visual abstraction of something happening beyond a window, which I had heard but never seen.
The importance of the paper
The torn paper edges became increasingly significant as the work developed.
They introduce an irregularity that contrasts with the more deliberate painted structures.
They also make each panel a physical object rather than simply an image.
I decided against conventional framing for the initial installation.
Instead, I mounted the paintings on black backing boards, using small black clips around the edges. There is no adhesive holding the paintings to the boards.
The paper remains exposed, including its torn edges and slight variations in the surface.
The mounting method is deliberately simple, almost industrial.
I wanted the paintings to appear as though they were being held in place, rather than enclosed or concealed by a frame.
The installation comprises nine panels, each approximately 50 × 50 cm, arranged in a three-by-three formation.
Together, they become something quite different from the individual paintings.
Seeing the work together
Until the nine paintings were installed, I had only been able to imagine their combined effect.
Seeing them together on the gallery wall was an important moment.
The individual paintings retained their identities, but a larger composition emerged.
The spaces between the panels became part of the work. So did the torn edges, the black backing boards and the slight irregularities in the way each painting was positioned.
I had created nine paintings, but I was looking at one installation.
The scale was also important.
A photograph can communicate the overall composition, but it struggles to reproduce the physical presence of the paper, the subtlety of the paint and the relationship between the panels.
The installation needs to be experienced in person to appreciate those qualities fully.
Returning to the music
Once the installation was complete, I returned to the original musical composition.
I found myself listening differently.
The paintings had introduced a sense of reduction and simplicity that I wanted to reflect in the finished recording.
Rather than adding more instruments or developing the composition further, I removed some of what was already there.
This was an unexpected development.
The original sound had inspired both the music and the paintings. Now, unexpectedly, the paintings were influencing the music.
It felt like a natural conclusion to the process.
The finished recording, BEYOND THE WINDOW, retains its original identity, but with more space and fewer elements competing for attention.
For the single's cover artwork, I created a composition using images of the original nine paintings, presented against black.
It brings the visual and musical elements of the project together.
A continuing exploration
BEYOND THE WINDOW is part of my wider exploration of the relationships between sound, music and visual art.
I am interested in what happens when an idea moves from one medium into another.
Something is inevitably lost in translation, but something new can also emerge.
The paintings are not illustrations of the music. The music is not a reproduction of the sounds.
Each emerged from the same original recording, following its own path of interpretation and abstraction.
And each must be able to exist independently.
The process began with something I could hear but couldn't see.
It ended with something I could see but which no longer needed to make a sound.
Richard Insall-Jones
BEYOND THE WINDOW — nine original mixed-media paintings on paper, presented as a single installation. Accompanied by an original musical composition.
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