Beyond gesture: A creative practice research study tracing embodied cognition, diffraction and iteration in the contemporary painting process

Art criticism, grounded in rational philosophy, often limits its focus to objective and visual analyses of the painted object. This intellectual objectification, perpetuated by common models of creativity, negates painters’ subjective experiences, and petrifies the creative process into a linear and systematic series of iterations. In contrast, this practice-led painting project focuses on the intensive aspects of the painting process to emphasise the under examined, yet crucial, role materials and tools exert in generating embodied cognition. A literature review that draws from new materialist philosophies, reviews studies from the field of neuroscience and comments on recent creative practice research and the practices of contemporary painters Marlene Dumas, Bracha Ettinger, Jude Rae and Paul Ching-Bor, examines gesture as embodied movement and cognition that occurs when handling the material aspects of the painting process. Data from interviews, that delve into the subjective experiences of ten mid-to-late career painters, together with my own experimental watercolour practice (that culminated in an exhibition, Partners in painting, 2023) demonstrated that contemporary painters value moments of improvisational engagement with material aspects of the painting process that generate surprising encounters that disrupt a linear and systematic understanding of iteration (Sawyer, 2021). This highlights the crucial role tools and materials play in activating the surfaces of the painting assemblage that rupture this understanding. In this research, surfaces are conceived as senses; ones that generate these intensive subjective experiences. Rather than reducing iteration to stasis and objectification, iteration can be reconceived in terms of Donna Haraway’s notion of diffraction − movement generated by waves when they encounter surfaces (senses) in the painting assemblage. Diffraction, also described in the field of science, accounts for the surprising and embodied shifts in painters’ perspectives, ones that ignite imagination and memory and activate, not just the intellect but all the senses of the painters’ body. This material engagement reinstates embodied cognition at the heart of innovation and discovery and opens opportunities for art and science to co-operate.<p></p>