Passibility in the painting gesture

The concept of experience, as suggested by pragmatism, forces us to think about activity together with passibility. The objective of the article is to substantiate the centrality of the latter in artis-tic creation and to think under what modalities it is experienced empirically by painters in the pictorial gesture. Based on ethnographic research carried out in a social and psychiatric support institution where there is a painting studio with the aim of empowering its users, we conclude that passibility (i) can turn outwards during the pictorial process, or (ii) towards the interior, giving rise to an introspective moment that serves as a motto for painting. We thus demonstrate that passivity and activity are intrinsically coupled in painting.