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bob whittaker
rhythm form silence
Based in Liverpool, UK, I am a professional musician and visual artist working across sound and form.
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My work sits within a lineage of reductive and systems-based abstraction, drawing on the structural clarity of Aurelie Nemours, the disciplined repetition of Julije Knifer and the conceptual rigour of François Morellet and Sol LeWitt. It is grounded in my experience as a performing musician, where timing, phrasing and silence are felt physically.​​​​​​​​​​
STEMS is a system for translating music into visual form.
Each painting is a direct transcription of a musical passage. Pitch is mapped vertically; duration is expressed through the width and structure of each form. Solid stems represent shorter notes, while hollow stems indicate sustained tones. Spacing between forms functions as silence or rests. Variations in proximity suggest phrasing, articulation and the grouping of notes into rhythmic structures.
Colour is predominantly limited to black and white, echoing the economy of musical notation. The polarity of each work is determined by musical character: black on white articulates rhythm and structure, while white on black extends duration into atmosphere and space. Subtle variations in tone - from warm off-white to bright titanium - further register shifts in temperature, from acoustic intimacy to electronic clarity.
​The works are not interpretations or abstractions of music - but precise visual scores in which every element corresponds to a specific event.
​Working across jazz, classical and contemporary music, the system allows compositions to be re-experienced as spatial rhythm: time becomes structure; sound becomes form.
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STEMS 06 - Arctic Monkeys, Do I Wanna Know?
STEMS 08 - Bach, Sarabande, Cello Suite No. 3
STEMS 09 - The Cure, A Forest STEMS 10 - The Doors, The End
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