My project was inspired by Julie Newdoll’s “Kimonos of the Senses for a Japanese Tea Ceremony”. A Japanese tea ceremony consists of movements and designs that were created to employ all the senses of a human. Julie Newdoll’s series sums up all the senses in a single gesture. Each painted kimono in the series was based on the biology of the one of the five senses. For example, the kimono representing the sense of taste utilized imagery of the types of cells and receptors involved in particular taste.

 

     My project also represents the five senses in the form of a painting. However, my canvas is the human body itself. I wanted to go beyond just representation of the senses. In the process of creating my work, my canvas is also experiencing the paint with their five senses. The paint itself is seen, smelt, heard, felt, and tasted. So on each respective body part that senses, I will portray the microscopic elements I found through research that enable the sense to work (such as sensory nerves for taste or cones and rods for sight).

 

     To truly capture the experience, I recorded the whole process of creating the final piece (a picture of my live painting) and compiled it to display the actual reactions of the senses during the process.