The Excitement of Drawing

I have always admired Paula Rego's capacity to draw really well and also to skewer people in the political art she does so effectively. I was really thrilled when I was accepted into the New Hall Women's Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, (www-art.newhall.cam.ac.uk/gallery/artists) because they have some of Rego's work. Now Paula Rego is having a new museum dedicated to her in Cascais, Portugal, her home country, and she is ever more enthusiastic about drawing. In a recent interview with Andrew Lambirth in The Spectator (http://www.spectator.co.uk/), she talked about the process of creation through just getting on and doing the drawing, mindful of the changes which will probably take place. She explained, ..."when you discover what things look like from drawing them, it's most exciting. You forget everything else because your attention is totally focused on what you are doing ..."

Drawing is indeed a most exciting adventure every time you pick up a drawing instrument. You learn how things are put together and how they work, in space, in differing lights, in time. You have no idea what really will happen on the paper until you have completed the drawing (or, more accurately, when it tells you that you have finished...). The initial concept or inspiration that impelled one to launch on the drawing in the first place is never the whole story. As you look hard, at length and with increased understanding, at what you are drawing, you - the artist - are changing too. Your imagination is being stimulated and all sorts of new connections and thoughts occur. Every time one does even the briefest of drawings, life is enriched.

No wonder Paula Rego talks of losing track of time when she is drawing. All acts of creation are miraculous erasers of the sense of time! Just ask the patient companion of any artist who has been assured that "this will just take five minutes to do..." as the artist tries to do a quick drawing or painting; half an hour later, or more, the companion is still probably waiting, less patiently! Being totally focused on drawing or painting is incredibly meditative and often healing too. Frequently I find that my sense of "the world being in balance" is directly related to how much I am painting or drawing. It has little to do with the degree of success of the art you are doing - it is the act of creation that counts. It is back to that excitement of drawing - the next voyage of discovery.

Lines and Swirls, Dots and Spashes

I am always fascinated to see the work of fellow artists in any group to which I belong in some fashion. The annual exhibitions of groups into which one has to be juried in some (often stringent) fashion are one example. The catalogues of shows by the National Association of Women Artists, the American Artists Professional League, Catherine Lorilliard Wolfe Art Club, the Pen and Brush or Georgia Watercolor Society, for instance, are wonderfully diverse, frequently of very high quality, and decidedly interesting overall.

Another group whose work I viewed today on the Web is formed by very distinguished artists whose work is in the New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, England. This is the pre-eminent collection of women's artworks in Great Britain. Artists in the collection were sent a small piece of paper and asked to create original art for auction on line to raise money for maintenance of the collection. I did a silverpoint drawing of an old cedar tree base, Cedar Lace.

Looking at the work now offered for auction on the New Hall website reminded me, once again, of the wonderful diversity of approach we all have as artists. Since each one of us had the same size piece of paper on which to work, it makes it even more interesting to see what each person has done. Lines and swirls, dots and splashes are indeed in evidence, with celebrations of so many different voices and ways of expression. New Hall has very sensibly made the initial bid very modest - £20 or $32.50 - and then you can bid in £5/$8 increments. Not bad at all as a way to own some of the top British artists' work.

I am reminded of the French exclamation: Vive la différence! It all makes for such an interesting world.

"Art ... in every lane"

It is always fascinating to discover the wellspring of artists' sources and inspiration. John Constable once remarked, "My limited and abstracted art is to be found under every hedge and in every lane, and therefore nobody thinks it worth picking up."

It is somewhat amazing to realise that he described his art as "limited and abstracted". If you look at a wide array of his paintings in oil and watercolour and his drawings, on a site such as John Constable.org, the overwhelming impression is his close, detailed attention to the flat, wide world of East Anglia.

(The oil sketch of Stoke-by-Nayland, at left, courtesy of John Constable.org is an example of his plein air work in this countryside.)

Suffolk, where he was born and mostly lived, is open to the blustery winds off the North Sea, with clouds banks shadowing the wide fields, tree-lined lanes and stretches of water (such as the Water Meadows near Salisbury, done about 1820, at right, courtesy of John Constable.org). Constable never forgot his rural surroundings, but he certainly did not show them to be limited... Abstracted, maybe, but not in the sense we tend to use "abstraction" today.

I find that it is indeed rewarding to go for a walk in our quiet neighbourhood along the riverside and by the marshes. Here too, there are always sources of ideas for drawings and paintings, and even though I know the area very well, the changes of season and light make everything fresh each time. And whilst it may be something that no one else notices, I find myself getting all excited about different things and views.

Along our sandy lane is an endless fascination for me: the remains of a cedar tree, clearly once a mighty seer, but now sinews and lace that become a myriad abstractions.

I keep drawing different portions of it in silverpoint. At left is one version of my "art ... in the lane" abstraction, "Cedar Remains". At right is a smaller drawing I have done of "Cedar Lace", also in silverpoint, which I am donating to the Newhall Art Collection, at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, England, for their fund-raising auction in February-March. It should be up on their website in February.

Constable was indeed wise when he went seeking his art "under every hedge and in every lane". We have all benefited ever since.