I’ve been learning to draw for over forty years now and I still feel like a beginner. Does this ever pass? I doubt it. Though perhaps not for those who are real masters of it. Does it matter? For I know in my heart of hearts that it isn’t about the end result but the doing of it. It is a fluid thing, a momentary sense of something wonderful, a kind of attune-ment that is soon gone. I like, indeed at times crave, the momentum, the energy of drawing from animate life. I love to watch, to really watch people and attempt to capture them with line, wash, colour whatever is to hand. But it is not an exact science (it isn’t a science at all) and it can be gloriously right and terribly wrong. But I work better with that uncertainty – there is something about that rush, that hurling of myself onto the page trying to get a gesture, a detail, a turn of a head just right. The still lifes, the buildings, the landscape I draw do not have the same effect on me. I need that testing. And yet when it isn’t there, or doesn’t feel like its there, like yesterday, I am brought so low. Keep going, he says, looking over at me from above his glasses. This doesn’t help, he continues, as he can tell I long to throw a tantrum. So I keep going making clumsy marks and not attuning. It has to be so. The learning is as much in ones failures as it is in the successes, perhaps more so. I think of van Gogh often at such times. His early drawings were lack lustre and unfelt but his later ones became sublime. Did he see the changing? How did it make him feel? Must we have others to tell us how good we are?
The sea-swimmers fascinate me. They come into the coffee shop most days, swamped in their towelling lined coats, their woollen hats, scarves, gloves and big boots. Yesterday one of them had a hot water bottle peeking out of the top of her coat. To be in such cold. To immerse oneself in it. I’ve done it in Cornwall, in November and the cold of the water terrified me. My heart felt like it was going to cease beating altogether. I’ve done it in the Med too. That was equally cold but at least one came out into the sun. And my body did feel exhilarated. Perhaps that’s why they do it. There is such camaraderie amongst them, as they order their hot chocolates and plates of toast. I miss feeling such vigour.
