“HAPTIC” explores the tension between physically perceived and mentally conjured colors. I wanted to run my hand along the boundary wall between the natural and the formal to find some crack where the ineffable flows through. Since I began at Mason Gross, a Cezanne quote has echoed in my head, “ I must tell you that as a painter I am becoming more clear-sighted before nature, but with me the realization of my sensations is always painful. I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature.” I feel the struggle Cezanne describes in my bones.

With this collection, I endeavored to hone my own perception of color. I began by visiting three of my favorite parks four times over the past semester, and I supplemented this field work with study of classic color theorists. During my exploration of color theorists like Johannes Itten and Josef Albers, I stumbled upon a text by Albers that defined haptic sense, which he describes as “the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.” Although Albers wrote about the difference between a color you want to create and the actual color you make, his description haunted me, especially as I processed how I’ve perceived time through my COVID quarantine. My haptic sense of time has altered – this past year felt like both the longest and shortest of my life. 

I decided to combine my four seasonal visits to each park into a single piece. Through this combination, the past year blends into one overarching experience of space, time, and color. The focus shifts from pure translation of natural colors to a formal contemplation of my own mental process as I take my perception, convert it into color, and blend it across the past year. The holistic result embodies my haptic sense of the experience, the gap that runs along that boundary wall between the world that is and the world we depict.