Advisor: Howardena Pindell

A Melodramatic Vision (2023) illustrates singer-songwriter Lorde’s 2017 second studio album Melodrama through 12 acrylic paintings, all 16” x 20”. The collection touches on my interpretations of each song on the album, envisioning the album through specific colors and forms. In naming my paintings, I added my own original titles along with each of its associated songs in parentheses. The series is exhibited in my own order rather than the original tracklist order. I included myself in the paintings to further add a sense of vulnerable intimacy and personal connection to the album, tying the relations between my interpretations of the album and my life.

Inspiration sparked for this project when researching abstractionist painter Wassily Kandinsky and his world perception with his condition of synesthesia. An excerpt from author Clive Cazeaux that discusses Kandinsky’s synesthetic mindset kickstarted the direction of my series: “The denial of representation in art, Kandinsky asserts, allows the paint to touch the soul. In this, he claims, the richest lessons for the artist ‘are to be learned from music for it is the artform that ‘uses its resources not to represent natural appearances, but to express the inner life of the artist and to create a unique life of musical tones.’” A pioneer in the beginnings of abstraction, Kandinsky had symptoms of synesthesia in his everyday life, which led him to see the world differently and analyze sounds and forms through color. Perceiving life from a perspective that blended sight and sound, synesthesia allowed him to express his feelings and emotions in his artwork to create representative and imaginative renditions of life rather than just observative practices.

Similar to Kandinsky, Lorde also has synesthesia, which ultimately led to her lucrative career as a singer. When in the songwriting process, Lorde would rely on her synesthesia to understand a song’s “colors,” and if they felt awry, it would guide her to a different sound production angle. In an interview with Vogue, she explained how the colors of Melodrama are mainly violets and blues, tying hand-in-hand with the chosen album art. Since her debut album, her ideas and ways of navigating life have always fascinated me, and conceptualizing and constructing this exploratory series has opened my eyes even more.

Since the release of Melodrama, the energizing yet somber electropop album has always been a standout, especially in my college years. Lorde developed Melodrama in her early 20s, and it has always been a handbook for me to revisit during my early 20s. Repurposing her life into the means of a house party, Lorde runs through the love, heartbreak, anger, depression, acceptance, and freedom that she experienced in her previous relationship, with each song exploring a specific topic. Through the extreme highs and deep lows, the album acts as a comforting therapy session and follows as a true coming-of-age experience narrative. In this series, I visualize each song using bold colors and flat objects to help convey the meanings behind each song, while also tapping into the fantasies of the unimaginable in current-day situations. Using surrealism practices helps viewers foresee my life and the album through an otherworldly yet reminiscent lens.

Arranged in exhibition order, A Melodramatic Vision begins with SIDE A (Hard Feelings), which equates to the first part of the song “Hard Feelings/Loveless.” “Hard Feelings” explains the cathartic yet yearnful emotions following a heartbreak — a dark time to revisit. The colors of the cassette tape embody dark blues immersed in a deep purple background, symbolizing the ideas of isolation and dullness. I took on a flat, planar style of depicting the cassette tape to ensure clarity for the viewer and segway into the flat shapes and forms shown later throughout. SIDE A is the first part of the song, with SIDE B representing the second half “Loveless” seen later in the exhibition. The inspiration for the cassette tape came from the lyrics: “What is this tape? This is my favorite tape.” By having these two canvases separated but still being able to be continuous next to one another, I wanted to play into Lorde’s decision to combine these two dissimilar songs while still conveying the same overall meaning. The shift from “Hard Feelings” to “Loveless” shows the shift in the album’s direction, moving away from seeking approval from others’ opinions to moving towards the light of self-love and reflection. A Melodramatic Vision plays on this shift, visually changing from murky color tones to pastel ones.

Title: SIDE A (Hard Feelings), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Following SIDE A is house party (Sober), which describes the setting where the majority of the album ultimately takes place. Showing the beginnings of Lorde’s life after her recent breakup, “Sober” puts the listener into the headspace of being drunk and free at the party — a place of high energy and forgetfulness of what occurs outside of the moment. While here, Lorde finds someone who she’s infatuated with, idealizing them both as the “king and queen of the weekend” and emphasizing the rush of relief in finding someone new. In creating house party (Sober), I felt it was necessary for the setting to be established for the viewer to understand where these events are taking place, tapping into the violets that Lorde emphasized in her production and adding warm yellows to help complement them.

Title: house party (Sober), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 20” x 16”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Transitioning into a car-like setting, Clown Car (Green Light) puts me into the picture as I put clown makeup on, entranced with an array of vibrant orange-reds and yellows and piercing blues. In the song “Green Light,” Lorde opens the album with the line: “I do my makeup in somebody else’s car” — the main catalyst in the shown imagery. She equates the initial stages of the breakup to waiting at a stoplight. The raging urgency to move on from the breakup is the foundation for the song, seeking the green light to move on to the next life event and waiting for the universe to approve of it. When waiting at a red light, anxious and impatient feelings arise for the light to change, rushing to get to the planned destination. Sometimes the light takes longer if trying to move onto a busier road, but it’ll eventually change — just like the healing period of a breakup. Anger also encapsulates “Green Light,” and Lorde wishes revenge on her ex-partner, hoping the trauma she dealt with spreads onto them. The heaviness in the lines “you’re such a damn liar” allocated for the clown makeup to come forward. Feeling like a clown is feeling like a fool, falling into lies you didn’t realize at the time, and coming out of the situation feeling like a pawn in a chess game.

Title: Clown Car (Green Light), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Similar in color scheme to Clown Car, film reel rolling on a high-speed rail (Supercut) depicts a film reel as a train car fleeting into the distance. Playing on words, since film reels roll to show a moving series of images and trains roll on tracks, the fusion of these images to represent moving at high speeds creates a yearning sensation. In developing film cameras, the film negatives are typically deemed useless once the real prints are created, a dark inverse of what the actual image looks like. The addition of the hand in the bottom left corner feels hopeless in going back into the past, being out of reach and impossible to achieve. No doors are visible on the train cars either, secluding the viewer from riding the train. The song “Supercut” idealizes the warm moments of previous relationships after moving on, seeing the whole relationship through rose-colored lenses, and wishing to relive it again. Clown Car and film reel rolling on a high-speed rail maintain a similar color scheme, where the first one remembers the negatives after breaking up, and the second one solely remembers the positives of the relationship, neglecting the negatives.

Title: film reel rolling on a high-speed rail (Supercut), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 20” x 16”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Head-On Collision (Homemade Dynamite) brings the narrative back to the party setting, revealing two people with cars as their heads colliding head-on with each other. Illustrating the car accident as a passionate kiss, shards of glass that ricochet all over the canvas resemble muddy-colored confetti. The song continues the plotline of “Sober” in that the two newfound lovers live in the moment and feel carefree of everything else around them. The inspiration behind this painting was ultimately the line “all the broken glass sparkling/ I guess we’re partying,” which puts this small, intimate moment into a large force of destruction for what is to come in a beautiful way. Emotions that follow a kiss are senses of confusion and hesitation in deciphering what just occurred — just like when a car accident happens. I also pulled inspiration from Rene Magritte’s 1928 painting “The Lovers II,” as I feel this painting categorizes the song’s feelings pretty well too.

Title: Head-On Collision (Homemade Dynamite), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 20” x 16”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

glamour trauma melodrama (Sober II (Melodrama)) showcases me as three emotional entities that blur into one another, threading each word of the title to the specific emotion set in the painting. Glamour sees life blissfully and with a clear mind, trauma is represented as an ugly and in-your-face feeling that you cannot look away from, and melodrama conveys overly dramatic perspectives on life. The painting captures the blurred understanding of emotions and how many can be blended into one another, leading to poor communication of speaking feelings both easily and freely. Further, the song “Sober II (Melodrama)” explores how disturbing it is when the lights are suddenly turned on during the party after developing a deep relationship with the darkness. Though light is usually depicted as an uplifting symbol, it puts a damper on the mood in this party scenario. The worries about the next morning barge in unwarranted: the hangover to come and the filth to be cleaned. Existentialism and nihilism are rooted in the song, seeking clarity on life situations and why unfair things happen to us.

Title: glamour trauma melodrama (Sober II (Melodrama)), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 20” x 16”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

In times of disparity and disorder, Wielding A Writer’s Weapon (Writer In The Dark) speaks on how words are the most powerful form of combat in battling life events. Depicted as a mature aged person wearing a suit, the place where a pen would be is exchanged with a knife, tying into how sharp speaking your mind truly is. Tackling a complicated situation using words rather than physical means is infinitely more effective, providing reasoning and thought to synthesize solutions. As someone who is a writer and resorts to words as therapy, this song is one that resonates the most with me on the album. Using writing as both an escape and a tool to interpret my feelings allows me to translate them into art — a time capsule of emotions to be seen from a mature point of view in the future. Lorde has an underlying anger and anxiety in this song, seeking out her lifelong writing skills to decipher her complicated feelings: “But in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power/ I’ll find a way to be without you, babe.”

Title: Wielding A Writer’s Weapon (Writer In The Dark), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 20” x 16”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Snapping back to the party narrative, Crying on the bathroom floor (Liability) unveils a low-angled snapshot of me in a vulnerable state nearby a toilet — with depressive, spiraling thoughts of misery and toxins. A raw sense of self comes when taking a second to breathe in a house party bathroom. Being locked inside, the muffled sounds beyond the door add to the loneliness present in the song. The somber piano ballad has led the listener to bedrock, with ideas that life could not possibly get any worse, striking as the lowest point on the album. The colors imagined in this scene dip into cooler tones, speaking to the people who bring down the mood of the party. Lorde closes off the song with the lyrics: “You’re all gonna watch me disappear into the sun,” ending with slight glimmers of hope.

Title: Crying on the bathroom floor (Liability), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

In Metamorphosis (Liability (Reprise)), Lorde plays into the continued version of “Liability,” with introspective feelings of acceptance and coming to terms with reality. Inside the bathroom again, the scenery is reimagined in warm colors and flat-colored images, with myself floating towards a light. This detail speaks of disappearing into the sun, with new beginnings on the horizon. Crying on the bathroom floor has me cocooned in a ball hoping for change to come — fully hiding in my arms and not looking up — and Metamorphosis represents that change happening. As seen in the reflection of the toilet water in Crying on the bathroom floor, Metamorphosis reveals that a better outcome has been around; I just had to look up to the brighter side of things. After trauma, a brighter future is bound to come soon. Lorde also develops a true image of self and shows growth and prosperity: “But you’re not what you thought you were.”

Title: Metamorphosis (Liability (Reprise)), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

After entering the sun portal in Metamorphosis, the narrative shifted into a fantasy world of what could have happened in Somewhere in NYC, Summertime (The Lourve). The two newfound lovers escaped the party scene and romanticized what their lives could be like after the night. The setting is reminiscent of hot summers in Central Park, and I wanted it to feel like it was at an intimate moment in time. The gushy and obsessive song “The Lourve” radiates with the opening line ‘Well, summer slipped us underneath her tongue,” tying into the themes of “Homemade Dynamite” and the intimacy of their developing relationship of possibly. An inspiration for artistic direction was Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings of wheatfields and landscapes, exhibiting life through a hazy yet comforting environment. Tying into a Van Gogh theme also threads the art museum motif mentioned in the song, placing the two lovers into a modernized painting exhibited in my series A Melodramatic Vision.

Title: Somewhere in NYC, Summertime (The Lourve), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Lost At Sea (Perfect Places) captures the feelings of imperfection and seclusion in a vast world. Not knowing where to go in life and being “lost at sea,” using a lighthouse symbol to help navigate these journeys helps put things back on track, all encapsulated in a seafoam green color. Unexpected mistakes and detours happen in life, and that is what makes our lives imperfect. The hand symbolizes the grip to find these places, wishing to travel everywhere to find life’s purpose and self. The outro of this song wraps up the themes of the album concisely: “All the nights spent off our faces/ Trying to find these perfect places/ What the fuck are perfect places anyway?”

Title: Lost At Sea (Perfect Places), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

SIDE B (Loveless) closes off the series as the second part of the song “Hard Feelings/Loveless.” “Loveless” acts as a song of self-love and true acceptance, transitioning to putting herself and her needs first to live a fulfilling life — a bright time to experience. Dissimilar to SIDE A, the colors of the cassette tape are light pinks engaged with a soft blue background, symbolizing the ideas of prosperity and reinvention. By being continuous with SIDE A yet exhibited separately, it plays on Lorde’s decision to combine these two dissimilar songs and helps bring together my series. The colors of SIDE B tap into this idea, while also being the light inverse of SIDE A. Acting as a closure to A Melodramatic Vision, it reminds me to keep trekking to brighter and newer things that are bound to come soon.

Title: SIDE B (Loveless), Date: 2023, Dimensions: 16” x 20”, Medium: Acrylic on canvas

As a bonus edition to the series, I recreated the original artwork for Melodrama made by artist Sam McKinness, incorporating myself into the composition in Melodrama Reimagined. Made with oil pastels, I wanted to exude the same energy as the original artwork while adding my style and perspective to it, emphasizing my common usage of vibrant color in my works. After this experience, I was able to reimagine my favorite album Melodrama through an artistic lens, becoming even more attached to the writing and production of the album. Crafting this series enabled me to understand my own life in broad terms and further exhibit the bridge between creative disciplines — music and art.

Title: Melodrama Reimagined, Date: 2023, Dimensions: 12” x 12”, Medium: Oil pastel on paper