Spell of the Sensuous #3

"Although contemporary neuroscientists study "synaesthesia" -- the overlap and blending of the senses -- as though it were a rare or pathological experience to which only certain persons are prone, our primordial, preconceptual experience, as Merleau-Ponty makes evident, is inherently synaesthetic. The intertwining of sensory modalities seems unusual to us only to the extent that we have become estranged from our direct experience."
"Nevertheless, we still speak of "cool" or "warm" colors, of "loud" clothing, of "hard" or "brittle" sounds. The speaking body readily transposes qualities from one sensory domain into another, according to a logic we easily understand but cannot easily explain."

I decided to respond to this writing with a watercolor piece that displayed a nose and a mouth. Focusing on color to represent the senses -- smell and taste, I blended blue and red to depict the 'blending of the senses' Abram refers to in the reading. Using "warm" colors, I represented this phenomenon that our senses blend together in ways in which we cannot easily explain. This idea is very intriguing to me, and it was fun to respond to my own senses in my process.