09/09/2021
A thousand thoughts even to begin, how to teach drawing, painting, the big and small “art” the thoughts of, in, around about it, all areas and avenues increasingly important as the subject area is by nature contextual and expanding exponentially as you enter its intellectual and physical operational spaces.
I enjoyed teaching at UWI for over a decade, I got away with a more wholistic approach in the limited time frames allocated, but the rhubrics, inputs and desired outcome outputs, had crept into the issues of teaching, perhaps quite necessary in some other formal subject areas, but problematic for me. I went back to teaching privately, engaging the currents and questions of the more focused personal enterprises of my students, devoid of rhubrics and its weighty political correctness.
The baseline is drawing, pencil to paper, thinking and measuring, making constant adjustments, like private investigators taking hundreds of notes, detectives at a crime scene, nothing within view is discarded in the looking and relooking at how things are in front of us, the path, the bench, tree, railing, walls and shadows, how light carves things up, how our perceptions and energy levels can deceive us. In this class the work is, intensely personal, learning a visual handwriting so it becomes second nature, part of and integral to visioning, functioning, seeing, dare I say, mindfulness.
No hurry, but an acute reviewing of each drawing, every sketch, learning to read nuances in how the image is being constructed, taking the line for a long walk, stumbling into mistakes and using questions as instruments of perception, how and why the image is lining up, or is not balancing, why is it not behaving the way the student wants, or might want “it” to, they knowing it could be better, but also knowing and appreciating the virtues of some patience.
So we practice the basics continuously but with longer set goals germinating in the background, homework if you like. The word research is boorish and schoolish, we are not in school. I encourage my students to become sponges, to go in many directions, seek out histories and stories and the apparent inter relatedness of the minds, math and physics of art making, the harmonics of pi, why the lines of the Parthenon are not straight and the heads of classical saints in church niches are out of proportion. We practice to see and feel if a line has variation, width, weight and breadth, how a line could be considered and controlled, and how that control accumulated, becomes instinctive resulting in a more fluid understanding of structure and spatial awareness.
The teaching is not structured as a definitive course with set agendas for them to master little techniques and tricks, instead, to try and engineer a more seamless flow between the disciplines and everyday life situations, personal contexts which during the last eighteen months have been understandably challenging. A definitive course with a more linear trajectory would have fallen apart during these recent months, instead we have managed to keep a fairly even stream of activity and communication during these times.
I take this opportunity to congratulate my students, not once have I heard any moans or groaning or complaints about how this c19 may have messed or disrupted their creativity, what is plainly obvious with regard to this issue was, is not discussed, lockdowns and social restrictions simply afforded extra in house studio time to consider the intricacies of this creative endeavour and sets of minor challenges designed to edge and inch the learning curve forward, the rest is up to each of us anyway. During these times, I have kept up my own studio practice and processes, you could say practising what I preaching.
In all of this background chat while we were drawing in the park, observing leaf, wind, persons in the shadows, the change of seasons, the ever shifting light carving up ground and air, personal challenges, a fu***ng pandemic thrown in for good measure, family health and community health issues, the forever politiking, yet our drawing sessions in the park, three hour blasts full of long slow gazes, deep breaths, and a lot of mistakes. Frequently passers by would pretend not to be interested, wanting to stop and say something, not wanting to sound foolish and moving along. A teacher, endless kicks, small jokes and non stop lyrics, often apparent nonsensical banter usually circumnavigating some complex visual question, but my job forever watching every gesture and frequently pointing out how a line could be out by only degrees, a millimeter or two, some exacting hawkeye assessments and measurements.
We became the classroom without walls, the internet, messaging platforms kept the visuals moving, this platform and page process and results, content rich, fumbles and successes – there is a patience which has developed, a subtle thoroughness, I believe that individual creative identities and approaches have been enhanced and hopefully new attitudes brought in to feed the flows in and out. The library of youtube and the wider internet allows pe*******on into historical movements, persons of interest, artworks and artefacts, all relevant, immersive, and necessary background stuff, the sort and kind of information that artists talk about!
Drawing is about and from the intellect, but, its urge, its seat of understanding is guided by a deeper instinct to literally scratch out marks, define mental and environmental spaces, it is martial in nature, supremely economical, meditative, a mark on a wall, a line in the sand can change the directions of 'how things will be'!
Edward Bowen, the art teacher
