Feeling Stones

Touch is crucial to our experience here on earth.

I suppose some of us become more immersed in the sense of touch than others.

I surely am drawn to expressing myself with thread and cloth

simply because of the immediacy and honesty of touch.

After all, your eyes can deceive you

but touch confirms that which your eyes can't believe.

In his book 'The Senses of Touch'

Mark Paterson reminds us of the expression

"Seeing is believing, but feeling's the truth".

Interesting how nowadays we seem to have dropped the second part.

Touch also makes me think of intimacy and proximity.

Holding my loved ones in my arms

gathering those little grand-girls in a close embrace

and I am eagerly awaiting being able to do exactly that very soon!

But there is more than the immediacy of touch on the skin.

I have always felt that

"Art can and should be a touching experience."

And Paterson goes on to explains this further

"Standing in front of a painting, appreciating a sculpture, or walking through a building, even if we are not permitted to physically touch the work we should at least be touched by it."

Therefore we feel or have a haptic experience

not only through our skin

but internally because of our aesthetic ability

for feeling, sensing and being affected

by what we see.

"Haptic Aesthetics"

 As a teen, before I thought of stitching as an expressive art form,

I loved (for teens always love or hate don't they!) the paintings of Cezanne.

I never understood why

but reading this book I am trying to understand why.

"Cezanne himself rather boldly declares that talking about art is almost useless since the man of letters expresses himself in abstractions whereas a painter, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete form to his sensations and perceptions."

I think it must have been his direct approach

his ability of creating an aesthetic haptic experience for me

because of his ability to translate depth, smoothness, softness, hardness and even smell into paint.

He was able to "paint the sensation".

I am still absorbing and thinking

trying to simplify Paterson's complex thoughts

and bring them into daily life in the studio.

Working towards stitching the sensation

Sometimes successfully

Sometimes not so

but somehow people like us are driven to try and try again.

I hope you have a haptic aesthetic experience today!