During my time teaching at FIDM, I met Julia Dittberner Neuman. She is an artist and floral designer. At the time, Julia was working in the library. We would often have inspiriting discussions about books, movies, and our own creative processes. Her work was recently featured in an article for Venison Magazine. It was great to read. I was also very intrigued to learn that Julia as synesthesia, a neurological condition where the certain sensory pathways of the brain are linked together. I have researched and taught about synesthesia as a gateway to creativity, starting at my time at FIDM. (Click here to read my article on synesthesia for The University of Warwick: The Warwick Research Journal Article) Today’s article is the conversation that arose between Julia and I, which explores our own artistic and creative processes, and how synesthesia has impacted them.
Floral Arrangement by Julia Dittberner Neuman
Monica: First, I’d like to say that I am so happy we met in the library at FIDM! You had such great energy and presence, and I could really feel your sensitivity to aesthetics. I will always remember you drawing the most gorgeous pencil sketches of these beautiful, delicate white flowers. I think they were tiarella flowers. So of course I was really happy to see you later enter into floral arrangements. Is this a medium you have always gravitated towards? Personally, I have always adored flowers, and most of my photography is centered around catching the moods and sentiments of flowers in nature. For me, walking outdoors always helps me quiet my mind. But I can literally sense different moods and feelings based on the ambient light and weather of the day. Sometimes a a cloud formation changing shape in the sky really illuminates or increases the beauty of the flower.
Blossoms. Photo by Monica D. Murgia
Or the flower just enhances the inherent beauty of the landscape – like icing on a cake. For a long time, I thought I was an empath or other psychological label that meant I was just extremely sensitive. But after my research, I wonder if my sensory pathways somehow are cross-wired. I’m interested in teaching some courses online on my website soon that explore this idea further. A lot of the artistic tradition always equated this experience as spiritual – which to me, it is – but there is also a scientific component as well. I’m really interested to explore this idea more in the future in my own work.
Rain. Photo by Monica D. Murgia
Julia: Your students are incredibly lucky. When you were at FIDM, I wanted to sit in on one of your classes but wasn’t sure it would be appropriate to ask. I sure wish I would have— reading what you write, you have such a gift for challenging your audience creatively and while giving such solid academic bases for your ideas. I really appreciate that you took the time to share your creative process and how you experience nature. I’ve enjoyed following your Instagram and I certainly feel what you describe in your photographs of your weekend walks with your dog. Such simple things can be so inspiring and can make you look at the world differently, especially when your day-to-day is so urban. Those sensory experiences really shine through in your paintings— excited to see how you continue to explore! When I started working with flowers, it was circumstantial. I had been itching to work in a more hands-on creative field and a friend brought me into her business.
Floral Arrangement by Julia Dittberner Neuman
I love so much about it, both the satisfaction of quickly designing tangible pieces and the “medium.” I’m learning about what grows each season through working with new flowers each week. I grew up going to greenhouses, hiking, and camping, but not until working with plants have I really started to LOOK at everything that grows all around me. Working with cut flowers adds another interesting dynamic. The life of a flower is so brief I’m always anxious to honor it the best I can.
Color Wheel with Bananas. Collage by by Julia Dittberner Neuman.
Monica: At what point did you learn about synesthesia? How do you think understanding this scientific phenomenology impacts your work? Now that you have a conscious awareness that not everyone experiences and perceives life in your unique way, how do you feel? How does it come across in your art and your practice?
Julia: I think I learned about synesthesia in college. Honestly, I wonder if I really have much of it at all. I always associated numbers and letters with colors, but just in my head. Until I learned about synesthesia, I thought everyone did that. I don’t see colors when I look at text on a page, it’s more like in my mind the letter D has to be green, 8 is a cool, dark color, etc. That said, becoming aware of it and learning how our senses can be connected has certainly changed how I see the world. I like what you said in your article “The ability to successfully link apparently unrelated ideas and concepts is the very definition of creativity.” I think I’ve subconsciously explored that in both my collage and floral work— grouping unexpected things together based on color and using repetitive “rhythmic lines and shapes.” The collages I’ve been making started off more as a design exercise before turning into their own obsession…
Prehistoric Purples. Collage by by Julia Dittberner Neuman
I listened to a Ted talk last week by the writer Pico Iyer and this quote stuck with me, “Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you could bring to it to put it into perspective.” Imposing color and movement on linear, literal forms is how I’ve been exploring those ideas in my artwork— the bright florals imposed over geometric shapes kind of represent the color and number associations that are in my head.
Floral Arrangement by Julia Dittberner Neuman
Monica: Do you have any images of your work for collages and floral arrangements that you think best illustrate the ideas of repetitive rhythmic lines and shapes,and also your exploration of linking unrelated ideas and concepts? For me, my paintings are illustrations of both of these concepts. I find that picking out the paints and materials is one big meditation. I stand in front of cans and tubes of paint silently. Then, a particular color will grab my attention and a sort of creative, ecstatic energy guides me. I’m very absorbed by the process of picking out colors; they each seem to have this emotional language that captures my attention. It’s an experience that is really outside of words and letters, so it can be difficult to explain . . . but I feel a variety of emotions and states of being when I look at different hues and colors. This is one of the types of synesthesia, and Joan Mitchell talked a lot about the emotional states of her paintings this when describing her creative process.
Dreaming by Monica D. Murgia 2014 . Oil and spray paint on board, 4′ x 2′. Private Collection.
Honestly, I am not really aware of my emotional state when painting. I’m generally just curious as to what will flow out of me. Yet when I am finished with the painting, I become fully conscious of what emotions or ideas are impacting me. I’ve tried to name them based on the experience or feeling that each of them expresses to me. Dreaming captures that really comforting, peaceful feeling as I pass from waking consciousness into a deep, relaxing sleep. The type of sleep where when your head hits the pillow, you close your eyes and smile, knowing how much you will enjoy resting. You know that you will make up feeling peaceful and refreshed.
Dreaming by Monica D. Murgia 2014 . Oil and spray paint on board, 4′ x 2′. Private Collection.
Paradise is a self portrait almost. I was really listening to a lot of talks by Alan Watts during the period when I painted this. There was a particular talk I liked where he describes how we are looking for “horizon”, a paradise land that is always just beyond our reach. He goes on to say that when we reach this paradise land, we will be presented with a mirror. And we will realize that we are – and always have been – the paradise land that we were seeking. That the paradise land is within us. This understanding that happiness is always within me, not something external, radiates from this work. I always see a beautiful mountain reflected in water at sunset – like a sunset in Hawaii.
Paradise by Monica D. Murgia 2014 . Oil and spray paint on board, 4′ x 2′. Private Collection.
Julia: Thanks for sharing some more of your work and insight into your creative process with me. I really like your painting “Dreams.” It must be so beautiful in person— the subtlety and softness of the colors and textures are really stunning.
The collage “color wheel with bananas” was the first circular piece I made, and “complimentary color wheel” is the most recent. With each of the circles, I wanted to create movement and depth in a confined space. I’ve been drawn to the floral imagery because of my work in that industry, and use diagrams from geometry textbooks mostly as a visual compliment. When I’m making a piece, I begin by focusing on the design and color scheme and realize a concept as I’m working. I tend to think of nature and organic forms as being so opposite from numbers and lines, but I know that in reality, everything has to work in balance to be successful and beautiful. For example, I’m aware of that all of the time in my marriage. My husband works in a highly logistic, quantitative tech field and I’m more intuitive and need to work with my hands to achieve tangible, physical results. Though often challenging, our personalities help us both to see the world more fully — how each perspective needs to exist together to create harmony.
Complimentary Color Wheel. Collage by by Julia Dittberner Neuman
I see the collage “prehistoric purples” loosely as a color wheel as well. It can be rotated and I used the dinosaurs’ motion to show direction. In that series, I spent a lot of time searching for images that stuck very close to my color scheme. I thought it was kind of funny that I landed on dinosaurs, flowers, and rocks. They are seemingly unrelated, but each has a very distinct relationship to time— extinct, ephemeral, and (essentially) eternal.
I’ve been thinking about creativity in a broader sense lately. Creativity is usually associated with the arts, but every field and every interaction requires creative problem solving. The notion that someone isn’t traditionally creative because they aren’t an “artist” feels confining. Your article about synesthesia made me think more about that. Even if one of your students didn’t show any of the signs of the condition, introducing them to a new way of seeing and hearing gave them room to express themselves. I read a little about Alan Watts after your email and this quote jumped out at me “This is the real secret of life— to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” There’s so much freedom in that, and a security of identity.
My idea for a word is “anachronism.” It might be an interesting place to start from both visually and conceptually— choosing misplaced visual inspiration in an attempt to fully express an idea. It seems like something we’re both trying to accomplish in our art; a meditative separation from time while being fully conscious of the present moment.
Monica: I couldn’t agree more!
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