I attended the opening on Friday evening of an exhibition at the South Square Centre, in Bradford, where this month’s exhibitor is Pat Belson, a long-term colleague associated with the Unit 9 Gallery there. I was really surprised to discover that Pat’s show consisted of works in felt, as I have known her previously as an able and innovative photographer. (In particular I was struck by the delicacy it is possible to achieve in this new medium, which I didn’t expect.) We got talking about this felt work, and it was interesting to hear that a part of its attraction for her was its tactile character. Of course, this is precisely one of the main attractions for me of work in pastels–my own principal medium.
I do like to get “down and dirty” with immediate contact between myself, the medium and the support. I can’t understand at all these prissy people who insist on wearing latex gloves in order to work in pastel. It looses the point almost entirely. It’s almost like wearing ear-muffs in order to compose music! Thinking about this over the last couple of days I have come to realise just how important is the sensory experience generally of painting. It certainly isn’t only about vision. There is a satisfaction in the movement of the hand, and even of the rhythm of moving towards and away from the easel, which can acquire a kind of balletic quality. (I really miss that at the life-drawing class, where the pressure of space makes it difficult to move well back from one’s work.) A part of the pleasure of working with oil-pastels is the discovery of the pleasure to be had in those smearing, smudging motions, that are subtly different from the way one does it with dry pastels.
These incidental sensory pleasures can be various. I remember when I was doing a sculpture course, the sheer joy of flinging plaster vigorously at the wire matrix, in order to drive it into the crevices. Then there was the pleasure of the bodily rhythms that developed when working in stone, chipping away at a piece of rock, and the musical quality of the ringing sound of the chisel.
Last year I spent some time in conversation with an icon painter, and was impressed by the importance for her of routine physical processes, such as smoothing the gesso surface.
Painting, it seems to me, is a process that engages several senses, and not just vision. It would be good to hear from colleagues, whatever the medium in which they work, about that wider aspect to their experience.