A Minor - Variations 13 — Acrylic on Paper by Arnaud Quercy

About This Artwork

This painting translates the A minor chord into visual harmony through systematic color mapping derived from piano studies and the circle of fifths. Quercy bridges sound and sight by assigning specific colors to musical notes: orange-yellow for A, red for C, and yellow for E. The work functions as both visual composition and theoretical exploration, demonstrating how musical structures can generate coherent visual relationships within the Synesthetic Explorations collection.

Orange tones dominate the composition, covering more than half the surface through warm salmon and burlywood hues. Red-orange areas provide substantial presence, appearing as orangered and tomato tones that anchor the chord's C note. Bright yellow accents emerge as goldenrod highlights, representing the E note with crisp clarity. Dark slate gray grounds the composition, while the artist's pitch-to-brightness system creates tonal variation within each color family. The acrylic medium on paper allows for smooth color transitions and maintains the geometric clarity essential to the harmonic mapping system.

Working at twenty-one by thirty centimeters in vertical format, this variation invites close examination of the color relationships and their musical correspondences. The piece demonstrates Quercy's method of making auditory structures visible through systematic color assignment. As a simple variation within his piano studies research, the work shows how traditional musical analysis can generate contemporary visual art that maintains both theoretical rigor and aesthetic coherence.

The artist's signature appears at bottom right, with certificate of authenticity number 20251123-0068 documenting this exploration of synesthetic translation between musical and visual languages.