When Music Breathes Inside My Paintings

By Abisay Puentes - Cuban-American Multidisciplinary Artist

Introduction: Where Sound and Color Are Born From the Same Wound

There are moments when I feel my paintings begin long before my hand touches the canvas.
As if something were already alive beneath the surface — a murmur, a pulse, a sonic mist pressing to be born. It is not “music” in the conventional sense. It is pre-linguistic, pre-melodic, almost primordial.

A spiritual vibration searching for shape. My work does not start with form or color.
It begins with a sound only I can hear, and eventually, that sound becomes music—
the breath of my paintings.

This is why I never create in silence. Even when the room is quiet, the narrative isn’t.

I am inside the architecture of La Parábola, the poetic universe that has defined thirty years of my artistic practice. And in that universe, every chapter—Brumas, Paradox, Mecanikalgia, Vértigo — is inseparable from the sound that gave it life.

 

The Early Fracture: I Was Meant to Paint, Even When I Was Studying Music

My mother wanted me to become a musician. I followed the path obediently: piano lessons, theory, discipline. But while my hands played the notes, my mind was elsewhere.

Drawing creatures.
Sketching machines.
Inventing worlds.
Building symbolism.
Chasing the shadows inside my imagination.

I did not understand it then, but painting and music were never separate disciplines for me. They were two halves of the same fracture— two languages attempting to speak the same truth.

Years later, when I began writing the poems of La Parábola,
I finally realized the truth:

My art would never be complete without sound.

The narrative demanded a voice.

 

Why My Paintings Need Music: The Hidden Architecture Behind My Work

The world of La Parábola is not linear. It’s a cyclical, spiritual, existential journey that follows a single figure: the man sedated by the “perfume-fruit,” connected to the machine built by Adam and Eve, walking in circles for ten thousand years, waking in terror, 
and confronting the abyss that follows.

This journey is too vast to exist in silence.

The perfume that sedates has a sound.

The machine that enslaves has a sound.

The fog of Brumas has a sound.

The awakening in Vértigo has a sound.

The emptiness that follows revelation has a sound.

My music is not decoration. It is part of the internal anatomy of the work. It reveals what the paint alone cannot express.

 

Music does not accompany my paintings.

It exposes them.

Brumas (Mist): The Sound of Spiritual Blindness

When I composed the music for the Brumas series, I realized something unusual:
the sound felt heavy, suffocating, slow.

Not sad— but clouded. Thick. 
Like a mind unable to see itself.

The theology of total depravity— that human inability to perceive its own broken state—
became a soundscape.

Each note was a veil. And each veil became pigment.

Collectors who have stood before Brumas while listening to the music have told me
they feel as if the painting begins to move inward— as if something inside them is slowly being revealed. That is the purpose.

Brumas is not meant to be looked at.
It is meant to be experienced.

 

Vértigo: The Sound of Awakening After Ten Thousand Years

When creating the Vértigo series, the music emerged first— a trembling sound between revelation and fear.

The man awakens after millennia of confusion. He realizes he has been walking in circles.
He sees the truth. And he is terrified.

The music needed to communicate that sensation: 
expansion with instability, clarity with anxiety, light piercing through a wound.

The compositions are open, rising, yet unstable— because awakening is not peaceful.
It is violent.

When I returned to the canvas after finishing the music, the strokes changed.
The contrasts intensified.
The narrative deepened.

Music told the painting where the light needed to fall.

Mecanikalgia: The Sound of Humanity Connected to a Machine

One of the most defining experiences of my career happened while composing for Mecanikalgia. I saw the man suspended, breathing through a machine he does not understand, living a life that is no longer his own.

The music became metallic, sterile, cold. Not horror—but resignation. A machine breathing for a soul. When I later returned to the painting, the sound had already altered my hand.

The lines became sharper.
The darks grew deeper.
The composition shifted toward tension.

The music did not follow the painting—
the painting followed the music.

My Creative Truth: I Paint What I Hear and I Compose What I See

This is the essence of my work:

Painting and music are one body with two lungs.

One cannot breathe without the other.

I cannot separate them. I do not want to separate them. 

They were born from the same wound:
my awakening to truth,
my exile,
my faith,
my migrations,
my disappointments with humanity,
my hope in God,
my longing for transcendence.

When a viewer stands in front of one of my paintings— with headphones on, listening to the piece written for that canvas— something unique happens: They stop observing an object and begin walking into a territory.

A spiritual one.
An emotional one.
A psychological one.

That is where transformation begins.

Because my art is not meant to entertain. It is meant to awaken.

My paintings are not decoration. They are mirrors. And my music is the breath of the soul standing before that mirror.

What This Means for Collectors

Owning one of my paintings means entering into a narrative that began long before the canvas existed.

You are not acquiring an object. You are stepping into a journey—a revelation in color and sound.

Each painting includes:

• Its own symbolic chapter inside La Parábola.

• Its own composed music piece.

• Its own philosophical and spiritual meaning.

• A fragment of a much larger universe that continues to expand.

Collectors often tell me that living with these paintings changes the way they think, pray, question, and feel.
That is the honor of my life.

Conclusion: Why I Create Both Painting and Music

If I had to summarize my artistic life in two sentences, I would say:

I paint to reveal the wound.
I compose so the wound can speak.

And when both come together—
when sound breathes inside color—
a third thing is born:

An experience that transforms both the viewer
and myself.

If you wish to explore this fusion of painting and original music,
you are invited to enter the world of La Parábola through my online gallery.