ABSTRACT
In this study, I have submitted a straightforward claim: that painters paint in order to feel. To explain how and why this is the case, I have, on the one hand, conceived of painting as a reciprocal form of affective scaffolding and, on the other hand, as an activity that incorporates some of the key relational needs and dynamics established in early environmental interaction. Moreover, I have systematically emphasized the existential significance of painting by tracing its connections to several core concerns that we must all perpetually deal with, and by exploring how painting enables painters to regulate and transform their fundamental feelings of being in the world. On the whole, I submit that these existential themes are already present in Winnicott’s thinking, more or less explicitly; I have merely sought to pick them out and elaborate on them in the specific context of painting.
