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The Five Senses: Taste (2003) Acrylic on canvas, 30.5x30.5cm Private collection This painting came out of the photographs I took for Scene From A Contemporary Novel. My initial idea had been to show the woman licking the tab on a roll of 120 film, but for that picture, it didn't look very clear when seen from a distance. However, the image of this action seemed compelling enough on its own, and the title Taste, referring to the taste of the adhesive on the strip of paper, ties the painting into the tradition of pictures symbolising the five senses, a common theme for a series of pseudo-portraits in the seventeenth century. Here, the taste of the adhesive is secondary to the action of moistening the strip in order to stick it down, but yet becomes prominent in the experience of the action, taste, like smell, being deeply associative. ©copyright 2018 Nicholas Middleton |
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