I’ve been to The British Library this morning for their audiodescribed art workshop, so much fun! We looked at a very detailed painting by Flemish artist Simon Benning who was working at the start of the 1500s when oil painting techniques were just beginning and the paint was made in the studio. We were all given a tactile diagram produced by a Swell Form machine where the black lines become raised for us to feel. It’s a tricky method as the very complicated painting has to be simplified (e.g. a range of mountains is represented by a thin line and a building in the forground is a much heavier block shape) Our describer Carly talked us through the image from top to bottom and helped us to fill in details in our imagination that she couldn’t include. There was also the opportunity for anyone with useful vision to look at the painting on an iPad and I was delighted to find some Braille on the back of the diagram.
This painting is from The Book of Hours and depicts a July day of haymaking, with large trees in the background and several people in the foreground using farming tools. There was also a dog curled up in the sun.
After our discussion we then had a go at ‘drawing’ using sculpture wire and I did some kind of stylised leaf shape that didn’t quite work! Some people used pliers and came up with some very intricate designs and others tried covering their wire drawing with tissue paper and glue to add texture. Some of the group then went to the exhibition to see the painting on display but by then I was tired from all the concentrating and was ready to head home.
Last time I attended I did some drawings of a papaya on the Swell Form paper so it was exciting to get the finished tactile version back! Some lines were quite light and others very thick, where Id used a paint brush rather than a pen. It is truly wonderful to be able to feel your work, even if it doesn’t always turn out quite how you’d imagined it haha!
I’l be back in the autumn for more experiments.
#TactileArt #blind #PartiallySighted #Braille #library #audiodescription #Disability @disability
CBC Toronto
Sarah Matthews
