Felicia Tabing

Statement

For the past few years I've been creating work to show how I experience grapheme-color synesthesia to represent mathematical ideas in how I experience them in my mind. For example, each numeral has a color I associate to them, such as 3, which I imagine as a light pink color. I use the associated coloring to create work that represents special mathematical numbers as accurately as possibly to how I view them in my mind. I am experimenting with different media, such as watercolor pencil, acrylic paint, gouache, marker, and pen and pencil to get the right color effect and personality that a number has to me. I also use the idea of proofs without words to represent convergent series as a way to represent special numbers.

Artworks

This represents a series that converges to the chance of a pregnancy complication that resulted in the death of my baby. The construction lines are a technique I learned from perspective drawing in dividing a rectangle into n pieces, and are kept in the image to demonstrate the infinite sum. The portion of area of the negative space is represented by the sums of areas of rectangles in a series that converges to the percentage. I usually color the area represented in the series, but I decided to leave that part empty and color the negative space, to represent the hole that was left in me. The colors used are colors from my memory of the experience of birthing a dead baby, and represent the limitless grief I feel.