COLOR TRANSLATIONS: MANTRA | 2024 - ongoing
Acrylic paint, wax marker, ink, wood panel
"mantra” in an ongoing series recognizing, reframing, reconnecting, and remembering emotional states using grapheme-color and emotion-color synaesthesia as a mapping aid. The series developed from an encounter with a close coworker. We asked each other “how are you?” during a busy season before responding “fine” as we rode an elevator together in silence. For someone I confide in regularly, I wondered “what was keeping me from telling her how I truly felt?” Initially, I considered 1) time, later 2) emotional capacity, then 3) both.
I began documenting my emotions daily and discovered my emotional vocabulary was limited. I recirculated the same words from morning to evening, day to day. Taking this knowledge into the studio, I wrote a spiral of daily words in white wax marker over a black-ink washed wood panel, the color of my mind’s eye. Then I mixed acrylic paint to my letter-color associations and painted over each letter of a word with various transparencies.
As I repeated this daily exercise of similar words on black backdrops, I craved a different sequence of colors visually and emotionally; my inner color palette seemed repetitive, predictable, colorless, to me. I then documented the frequency of letters (lowest frequency to highest frequency) for select works and found that I prefer lower frequency letter color palettes (see images for February 23 and 28, and March 22; low frequency left, high frequency right). I was determined to expand my emotional vocabulary. Would external factors like like weather, place, and people expand my emotional state? These artworks are reminders of the temporality of an emotional state and my ability to rewire emotional fluctuations by creating a more dimensional, diverse, and, literally, colorful inner world despite word connotation.
Photos: © 2026 Matthew Vicari.
Acrylic paint, wax marker, ink, wood panel
"mantra” in an ongoing series recognizing, reframing, reconnecting, and remembering emotional states using grapheme-color and emotion-color synaesthesia as a mapping aid. The series developed from an encounter with a close coworker. We asked each other “how are you?” during a busy season before responding “fine” as we rode an elevator together in silence. For someone I confide in regularly, I wondered “what was keeping me from telling her how I truly felt?” Initially, I considered 1) time, later 2) emotional capacity, then 3) both.
I began documenting my emotions daily and discovered my emotional vocabulary was limited. I recirculated the same words from morning to evening, day to day. Taking this knowledge into the studio, I wrote a spiral of daily words in white wax marker over a black-ink washed wood panel, the color of my mind’s eye. Then I mixed acrylic paint to my letter-color associations and painted over each letter of a word with various transparencies.
As I repeated this daily exercise of similar words on black backdrops, I craved a different sequence of colors visually and emotionally; my inner color palette seemed repetitive, predictable, colorless, to me. I then documented the frequency of letters (lowest frequency to highest frequency) for select works and found that I prefer lower frequency letter color palettes (see images for February 23 and 28, and March 22; low frequency left, high frequency right). I was determined to expand my emotional vocabulary. Would external factors like like weather, place, and people expand my emotional state? These artworks are reminders of the temporality of an emotional state and my ability to rewire emotional fluctuations by creating a more dimensional, diverse, and, literally, colorful inner world despite word connotation.
Photos: © 2026 Matthew Vicari.
MANTRA IN-PROGRESS
Acrylic paint, wax marker, ink, wood panel + Glass
External factors like weather, place, and people color my ability to recall words, names, and speak fluidly. Layering these agents as glass (above) demonstrates the depth of an emotional experience by adding contextual colors. Contextual color, like my emotional coloring of encounters with people, overlay and blend with my grapheme color perceptions. While other times contextual color affects my inner world less allowing clearly defined emotions bubble to the surface as the color-memory for that day.
As this series develops, I record questions about how our external environments color our inner human worlds:
- Do I need / want an expanded vocabulary (language) for my emotions?
- Do I emote based on word color? If I choose a word for an emotion of one color, am I more likely to seek that same color palette of emotions, or to change it?
- What is your favorite color? How does our favorite color affect our inner and outer worlds?
- How does engagement with nature change mood and therefore color our inner world?
Photos: © 2026 Matthew Vicari.
Acrylic paint, wax marker, ink, wood panel + Glass
External factors like weather, place, and people color my ability to recall words, names, and speak fluidly. Layering these agents as glass (above) demonstrates the depth of an emotional experience by adding contextual colors. Contextual color, like my emotional coloring of encounters with people, overlay and blend with my grapheme color perceptions. While other times contextual color affects my inner world less allowing clearly defined emotions bubble to the surface as the color-memory for that day.
As this series develops, I record questions about how our external environments color our inner human worlds:
- Do I need / want an expanded vocabulary (language) for my emotions?
- Do I emote based on word color? If I choose a word for an emotion of one color, am I more likely to seek that same color palette of emotions, or to change it?
- What is your favorite color? How does our favorite color affect our inner and outer worlds?
- How does engagement with nature change mood and therefore color our inner world?
Photos: © 2026 Matthew Vicari.
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© 2026 Lauren Alyssa Bierly || All rights reserved
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