ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [22 April 2009]

A colleague of a friend asked me last year if I was interested in doing a few life classes for medical students - my recent work has been based within the landscape but I have a long association with life drawing, did anatomy as a medical student myself; so I said "yes – probably – good idea, important for medics to have an understanding of the role of the body in art/culture – also dynamic demonstration of the uses of anatomy blah blah". .

However, it’s going to be much more than I anticipated.  For an SSC the students select a topic, study it for four weeks and then produce evidence of their research (lots of drawings, reflective writing in sketchbooks in this case, I think) AND five thousand words of coherent writing. That’s almost as much as my Fine Art dissertation, for which two whole semesters were allocated. 

This is going to be a big shift in my own artistic practice, although I've been looking for ages for an excuse to get away from the "landscape painter" pigeonhole I seem to have got myself into (although my paintings and prints aren't literal/traditional views of the countryside).  Recently I've been trying to incorporate human elements into my work, albeit indirectly, so I hope that by the time this project comes to fruition (if it does!) the shift will have become a gentle slide.

# 2 [23 April 2009]

I came away from our meeting last week full of ideas, and really keen to get going.  My sketchbook is filling up rapidly - all those articles and postcards I stockpiled "just in case".

The main motif of the project is to expand the experience gained by students, to make them more aware of the societal/cultural aspects of "the body" in all its manifestations and deepen their understanding of its structure and function.  Their course is already designed so that they do a lot of drawing -my job will be to enhance this, and get them to think outside the "scientific" box into which their intensive training thrusts them.  

It's a truism to say that all professions/occupations etc. come with their own mindset and language.  Part of a training programme always includes training people to think in a particular way - useful for them to do the job properly, but potentially restricting if applied to daily life.   Anyone who chooses our module is going to have to be prepared to attempt a different kind of thinking (me too I suppose).

Our provisional list of topics includes investigation of structure, aspects of illustration, life, death, gender,  the Universe and Everything.  We might as well be comprehensive...

# 3 [27 April 2009]

It's been an interesting few days: went to Tate Liverpool to see the Glenn Brown exhibition - nine rooms' worth of paintings.  It took us all day to go round, with a break for lunch - a very intense experience.  Apart from all its' other attributes, the work is a masterclass in the manipulation of perception. Back home, looking at my old copy of "Eye and Brain" by RL Gregory I realise how out of date it is.  Ditto Gombrich's Art and Illusion?? Must find something more up to date - if I can understand it.

Spent part of the weekend talking about medical education with friends -  a GP and a just-qualifying new medic. They were enthusiastic about the idea of incorporating "proper" drawing into the student curriculum.  When I got home I found an email from a colleague saying much the same things, so I hope I can deliver the results.

I also received an email image of  a tiny votive figurine excavated locally by the husband of a friend.  It dates from the 1st century AD, and they've called it Colin (don't know why).  It's an amazing object - sorry; he's an amazing  character - and I've spent all afternoon trying to capture the essentials of his appearance and charisma.  He has a rather square jawline and his nose has gone giving him the appearance of a prizefighter (or gladiator?)  Also, his feet and lower legs are missing.  So far he's generated a couple of pages in the sketchbook and some unsuccessful monoprints, but I think he's got star potential.

# 4 [30 April 2009]

I have just spent most of the afternoon composing a list of topics for students to choose from - not easy.  Don't want too much detail at this stage, and I'm hopeless at educationspeak. (And artspeak too, if it comes to that.)  I thought "The Skull beneath the Skin" sounded quite snappy for one of the headings, even if it's not original.  Anyway, the list has gone off for comments, so that's that bit done.  The rest of the afternoon was spent surfing "medical humanities"/ art/ anatomists/ museums.  The16th century anatomist Andreas Vesalius is featured on a website called "Famous Belgians"...

# 5 [4 May 2009]

I've been trying to find out a bit more about votive figurines, but can't find anything that exactly corresponds to "Colin". What is he holding in his right hand, and why doesn't he have any feet? At the moment I don't know what sort of proxy sacrifice he represents - it would be nice to think that he has some healing role, but of course he might be a good luck token, or something totally unpleasant.  At least he still has his head.  I don't know exactly where he was found, but according to the OS map there's a holy well in the same area - although nominally Christian, a lot of these places are in fact much older.  I think I might take a trip out to his (approximate) finding place tomorrow, do some drawing and look around a bit.  

# 6 [7 May 2009]

The research continues.....

I suffered a medium-sized panic last week while surfing "medical humanities" - its' proponents seem to have carved out a real niche for themselves, and while it's great that there's a journal and a proper discipline to the study it makes it a bit forbidding for "outsiders".  I don't have a qualification in Medical Humanities; there are lots of people out there who have degrees in the subject (I know some of them); am I poaching on their territory? etc etc.  But calm down - what I'm actually being asked to do is to teach a drawing-based module to medical students, I can certainly do that and I wouldn't have been asked if I wasn't thought to be up to it (would I?....here we go again..)

Had a lovely talk on Wednesday with my old tutor from art school:  she's very supportive and has made several very helpful suggestions.    On her advice I  have downloaded the QAA benchmark on fine art teaching - it looks surprisingly approachable, but then I haven't read all of it yet.  She reminisced about doing life drawing with a 4H pencil - don't fancy it myself.  Henry Tonks  was keen on it too, and he was a surgeon as well as professor at the Slade.  Now here's a whole topic on its' own: medics as illustrators: name doctors who were also artists, artists who were anatomists, etc etc.

# 7 [8 May 2009]

Earlier this week, I went out to the general area where Colin the votive figure was found, and did some drawing around the holy well on the cliff.  A remarkable spot, up among the sheep and the ravens; surrounded by wild flowers and attacked by the wind.  Saw an amazing beetle hiding in a tiny scrape in the grass - my insect book identifies it as the male Minotaur beetle (appropriately classical). It has wonderful "horns", and armour.  See image on wildaboutbritain.co.uk.  Can't work out how to set up a link in this box.

The holy wells in this part of the country have a long history, and some bear the signs of being looked after well into modern times.  This one is reputed to cure "mental problems", and required a proxy sacrifice in the shape of two quartz pebbles.  The whole thing is open to the sky, and the chambers are silted up.  Water still flows out, down the pasture and into the sea. It's a bracing experience getting to it, and the view is really uplifting.  I certainly came away feeling cheered and relaxed (even though I didn't have the requisite pebbles to offer.)

Having polished off "The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy" by Ruth Richardson, I am now tackling her "Death, Dissection and the Destitute".  It's rather hard going - not because of her writing, which is good and clear - but because of the subject matter, which is extremely grim.  However, I shall persist in the name of Research.

# 8 [15 May 2009]

I've just got back from a really good, thought provoking all-day symposium at the Regional Print Centre in Wrexham, timed to coincide with the Wrexham Print International 2009.   There was a particular focus on the role of artists' blogs with Andrew Bryant from a-n and Pam Newall and Don Braisby from the Regional Print Centre.  The general consensus among bloggers was that blogging can really help your practice as an artist, although it is definitely addictive and can sometimes be another layer in the woven fabric of prevarication, stopping you from actually getting down to making the work (someone suggested that "incubation" was a better word than "prevarication" in this context.)  Well, anything which encourages reflection and consideration is a useful tool providing it doesn't paralyse you completely - a "good servant, but a bad master".

I've been thinking about "good" and "bad" drawing lately, and whether there's any such thing.  It's difficult to define:  there are so many things to take into account, so much art-historical and philosophical and post-modern baggage.  An art tutor once said to me "A good drawing should look like a battlefield", but does it follow that a drawing which doesn't look like a battlefield is "not good"?  Surely not.  See last year's Jerwood Drawing Prize.  See Raphael.

I got out my old sketchbooks to find  examples of "bad" drawing for the blog:  what struck me more than the quality of the work (mostly OK) was the consistency of my interests over the last forty years.  Alright, more imaginative/imaginary/illustrative stuff when I was a teenager, but pages of little figures drawn from observation - some of them not too bad at all (and it's amazing how scanning them into the computer improves them!).  But some nasty overpencilled landscapes done at the age of fourteen.  Tut, tut.

# 9 [29 May 2009]

Well, hubris has struck in the shape of an Internet fault just when I was getting used to having Broadband - nay, relying on it.  Now I'm in the Public Library with 3 minutes to go and too much to say.  I had a fascinating visit to the Welcome Institute in London at the beginning of the week, more of which later as there isn't time now -  So, just a scrap about drawing  www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ac/tracey     

has a discussion section about good/bad drawing which is worth looking at, although a bit scanty on contributions.  There's also an archive of found drawings - I have lots of these, really must get them organised, do something with them (along with all the other things which should have been done by yesterday)

# 10 [7 July 2009]

Well, at last I'm back online - possibly permanently???  So far, the tally is: a series of engineers' checks on the line, another series of engineers' checks on the line, "oops, could it be the router?".  It was - twice.  So I'm now on the third router, and ... fingers crossed, so far so good.

Since I've been away, (and I've been away properly, too) several things have happened.  Firstly, I've lost track of where I am with the project.  Must sort this out.  Secondly, the drawing "Homage, KSH" has been accepted for a national travelling exhibition - http://www.linesandstrata.wordpress.com -and that's another of my drawings at the top of the 2006 archive page! 

Thirdly, there seems to be a bit of publicity about life drawing on the television at the moment...  I don't have a TV, but I did read about Artangel's project in a friend's newspaper while I was on holiday.  It was discussed on Radio4 on Saturday http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qh6g. Odd to hear apparently outward-looking media types retreating into the old "I can't draw for toffee" stereotype.  They seemed still to be suffering from the effects of school art classes:  drawing-as-a-competitive-sport; your work isn't good enough to be put up on the wall; if it doesn't look like the model then it isn't a good drawing.  I think I need to see if I can download the Channel4 programmes & find out what it was all about.