‘Skin’ and pigment: a rearview glimpse at the oil pastel

In one form or other, the pastel has been in human use for at least 10,000 years and most probably significantly longer.

The oil pastel however, is a mere infant by comparison having been developed in the early twentieth century for use by children on one hand and artists such as Pablo Picasso on the other.

Its composition is a mixture of wax, oil and pigment and once formed into a cylinder is wrapped in a paper sheath, or skin, presumably to add strength and to protect the users’ fingers.

In use, the medium is characteristically dynamic in colour and possesses the innate ability to blend either by smudging or through the use of solvents.

The oil pastel, often in a cardboard box containing others just like it in various hues and tones, is frequently found in the art therapy room as part of the art therapists’ basic toolbox.

What interested me when I practiced as an art therapist was the regard shown by individuals’ to the medium in three particular situations; the new box; the ‘old’ box and the behaviour of the oil pastel under creative use.

The new box is a beautiful thing. Its contents arranged in tonal gradation ranging from cadmium yellow through to burnt sienna. In some ways it appears to echo the satisfying primary object of analytic theory. Of course difficulties, for some, seem to arise when the pastel is first used. Use inevitably impacts on the idealness of the whole object-crayon changing its form and appearance, much like our first projections upon our primary objects during infancy. If the pastel should break, a not unusual occurrence during the creative process, regret and grief–like reactions may follow.
These observations are drawn from my work with people with learning disabilities and I wonder if notions of ‘the ideal’ and ‘the broken’ are perhaps intensified by experiences of difference and prejudice.

It is as-if, for some, the pastel both embodies and enacts painful experiences associated with damage and disability.

The ‘old box’ with its broken fragments of once whole oil pastels was often rejected (not unlike the life-experience of the learning disabled) in favour of more integrated media such as the fibre-tip pen. Of course, some of this might be related to the ‘dirtiness’ of the ‘skinless’ pigment. The loss of the barrier between the container and the contained seemed to bring about an anxiety for some that the pigment, and it’s unconscious associations, would indelibly, and perhaps toxically, stain their fingers and by extension, their essential personal and public sense of self.

It’s hard to say what lay beneath this phenomenon, but I’m left wondering about the discomfort that might be associated with things tainted and the tension between order and disorder that play upon the inner resonances that ripple in the unconscious of the individual.

Barrie Damarell retired four years ago after working with people with learning disabilities for thirty years.

He has published several journal articles and book chapters.

He also served on the editorial boards of The International Journal of Art Therapy: Inscape, and, until recently, ATOL: Art Therapy Online.

He lives in Devon.