Tantalizing Textures

The interplay between our emotions, feelings, and sensations has a lot of blurred lines. The emotion of dread often leads to a physical feeling of sinking in your stomach, the emotion of excitement leads to the experience of butterflies.

We often assume that emotional reactions are based in our minds, but actually, they’re also physical. Our minds create these experiences based on emotional cocktails in our bodies for us to experience along with the more mental aspects of emotions. We see something with our eyes, our brains process it, our bodies charge with feeling, our minds race with memories, reactions in an orchestra of experience. It happens in a flash.

There are some that are universal, in fact we describe certain emotional experiences with words or phrases typically assigned to physical experiences.

Heart-warming.

Sent chills down my spine.

Tingling with excitement.

Skin crawling.

A wave of nostalgia.

Sometimes, even just thinking or reading the phrase makes you feel the sensation.

Our feelings are physical.

When I create a piece of art, of course, I put care and attention to the color, shape, size, the contrast. All of these visual cues can create an emotive experience when you look at it.

But I also consider the texture.

In making collage pieces the texture is of vital importance.

A lot of times we have emotional connotations associated with texture. If someone is spiky, or soft, or hard-nosed, gritty, rugged, rough around the edges, we instinctively know what that means about their personality and demeanor.

Textures tell a story.

Texture occurs in shades in the same way color does. It can be contrasted. It can create excitement, peace, coziness, coldness, or fear.

A twisted piece of woven twine cascading across a soft, delicate paper creates a contrast of texture that insinuates a contrast of emotion.

When we experience an emotion, we often experience a physical feeling following it.

Curiously, when we anticipate a physical feeling, it can also lead to an emotional reaction.

Our minds and bodies are intertwined to navigate through the world physically and emotionally in beautiful, textured, tandem.