Hazel Soan has studios in London and Cape Town; she travels widely for her painting. Hazel is the author of 14 painting books, has recorded several DVDs and her work is in private and public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and a number of embassies. www.allsoanup.com
I am right-handed, so when I fractured my right wrist in 2010 I was devastated – I thought that I would not be able to paint for many weeks. Yet in a very short time I discovered that I could paint well enough with my left hand to fulfil my commissions, and that painting in watercolour required such a light touch that, even after a few weeks, with my right wrist in a brace, I could paint with a straightened right arm. But there was one huge difference, not in technical ability, nor in the appearance of the paintings, but in what I call the ‘bliss factor’. Painting with my left hand and with a braced right wrist did not enable me to enter the zone of bliss that I frequently enjoy when I am deep in concentration in a watercolour painting. I pondered why, and concluded that the brush had, over many years of painting, become an extension of my right hand, which in turn created a seamless conduit for the flow of choices and decisions made with my mind, heart, gut, spirit and soul; the wrist fracture had disrupted this – normally instinctive – flow. It took several months of rehabilitative exercises to get back the full movement in my wrist, and only then did I regain the bliss factor