This week’s cover image is by American artist and renowned synaesthete Georgia O’Keeffe, the perfect illustration for our lead feature, Seeing Sound.

Limelight’s Jansson J. Antmann delves into the unique and beautiful world of synaesthesia, a neurodiversity experienced by around 4 percent of people, in which stimulation of one sense involuntarily triggers another. A synaesthete musician may “hear” colour; a synaesthete painter may “see” pitch, tone and harmonies.

The October 2025 cover features Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1918 painting Music – Pink and Blue No. 1. Image: Album/Alamy. Permission of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe.

Antmann speaks with Macquarie University’s Professor Anina Rich – Australian Research Council Future Fellow with the School of Psychological Sciences and the MQ Performance and Expertise Research Centre – who has spent years investigating this remarkable ability, one shared by a number of leading composers, musicians and visual artists. Composer Alice Chance, oboist Celia Craig, Canberra Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Jessica Cottis and CSO subscriber Shirley Allen also share their synaesthetic experiences.

That sense of pushing boundaries continues with British pianist Nicholas McCarthy. Born without a right hand, McCarthy has forged an international career...