Synesthesia in Art

Yesterday, I came up with a structure to depict my most visual memories in and around my childhood, and parts of my husbands. Interesting, we led parallel lives almost, being in the same places at the same times ( yet never meeting), and then, amazingly, meeting again ( for the first time) in our 50's. Coming up on our 10 year anniversary, we will attempt to depict this folksy inheritance of two people who grew up in the midwest during the 50's and 60's, gone through the 70's, getting more serious in the 80's, and meeting in the 90's. It should be noted that synesthesia means that the inherited trait that I possess and I know that my son and father possess depicts a much larger and folksy reality than what was in actuality.

When my son was just beginning to talk and walk, he used to look me in the eye, and read my mind. I read his mind, but what was understood at the time, was just the way those "things", that really raw perception which is "knowing" comes down through the generations. I still smell the coffee my grandmother had me mix with milk, as she discussed everything about the family that I had only really imagined, but didn't really know. I see her vividly to this day, sitting there at her table next to the kitchen, where the two of us sat. I can see in detail the rooms of that home. My grandfather also, vivid in my imagination, the smell of his skin. He was an auto mechanic, so consequently he had that oil smell on him even years after he no longer worked on cars. The significance of this is the fact that the olfactory senses bring to mind the visual, they have been tied together synonymously at the first, then through the memory of completing the visions and remembrances over time, they did not change, they became even more real. But, I did roil them over in my head over time. The colors of the room are dark green and grey and some blue. The atmosphere was a somber and at the same time interesting place. My grandmother's bedroom was likely yellow and white. Those are the colors that I feel when I think of her. She smelled wonderfully familiar too. That creamy coffee smell, and a light fragrance depicted by her very demeanor. She was so kind, and warm, and I fell into her spell - so to speak. The stories were many and often.
Before this time, it was not vivid but, I do remember seeing my grandfather in his oil pit at the station, I also remember being a little afraid of the height and open back stairs leading down the back of the apartment that the grandparents lived in at the time. As I remember, there were two open porches, and I think there was a porch swing on the upper unit. Grandmother Brown asked me to deliver a cup of coffee to Grandpa Brown who was at the station working in the pit. I carefully made those trips with the full cup of coffee down the stairs and down the open stairs to Grandfather who loved getting his coffee that way. This I do remember. More on all of this later. The painting will be the Gas Station in Linden Hills, the apartment and all the rest.