Some artists venture beyond the visual and look into the other senses that shape our daily lives. Drawing your senses – sketching and painting the nuances of sound, touch, taste and feelings stretches the boundaries of conventional artistic expression. I invite you to explore this area and uncover more connections between art and the human experience.
Listening to silence…. In previous blog posts (links below) I have explored the experience of drawing sound, something I have come to do in my daily practice. I find an extraordinary number of marks I can make depending if a sound comes from high, or low, left or right of me, and if it is a sharp high-pitched sound or a soft low sound…..
I look at the drawing above, and I know there were birds, a slight wind on my face, a plane, cars passing by and a boat motoring in the harbour.
Tastes and texture
I recently tried painting food, not in the traditional way, but by painting the feelings, taste, texture, smell, temperature etc. The suggestion was to use a fig, which would be an excellent choice, but I only had a steaming hot bowl of chia porridge, which has many textures (soft chia, hard nuts) and flavours (mild flavours together with ginger warmth) and hits of apple and raspberry. There is also a rhythm to eating that translates into marks. My resulting painting is below:
This method invites the viewer to go beyond the visual and to actually taste the strokes, feel the texture and immerse themselves in the vivid sensory experience.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Sketching the unseen
Drawing your senses and feelings invites you to go beyond the seen and into a world where porridge can be beautiful and a distant hum of a ship’s motor gives a drawing a soft imprint. Why not pick up your sketchbook and give it a go!
With thanks to Emily Ball and Katie Solohub who gave me the ideas to explore.
In her poem, The Word Plum, Helen Chasin describes eating a plum as an extremely sensual, tactile experience. We are sensual beings and expanding our perceptions is rewarding and surprising. Give it a go!
The word plum is delicious
Helen Chasin
pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savouring murmur
full in the mouth and falling
like fruit
taut skin
pierced, bitten, provoked into
juice, and tart flesh
question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure.
Ailsa Brims Art 