Drawing Life 8
We had our second class on Saturday. Although I’m supposed to be the teacher I draw along with the class and learn, I’m sure, as much as they do. We’re really focussing on playing. To begin we crank up the music and just draw in an abstract way, explore lines and marks and smudges. The music keeps us from going into our thinking, judging minds.
Later in the class we took some of our drawings and cut them up to make new images. After you play for a while you begin to discern elements of expression that are speaking to you. Taking a big drawing and cutting elements from it to paste on a small board really gets us thinking about simplifying. More to the point we begin to bring a more conscious intention to what we’re doing. The playing is all gesture and movement but we need conscious intention too.
We all brought in a couple of images or objects in which we found inspiration. Maureen brought in a postcard of a painting and some beads, Deb brought in a postcard of a painting that she loves of a bird painted by a Dutch artist in the sixteenth century, Sally brought in images she’d cut from magazines of patterns. One the cross-hatch pattern of a black wicker chair against a white wall. It was something I might not have appreciated if it were not for the way she cropped it so we didn’t see the whole chair. I’m really looking for how these things we’re attracted to can become the forms our own expression takes. I think they can open up powerful emotions and allow us to create images that take us somewhere.
Deb said she’d like to express compassion in her art. I know with that intention that the energy of compassion will come through in what she creates. That’s why playing in an abstract way is so great. It’s pure energy. And as we go on we can feel the energy more and more. And if a piece of art can convey compassion, how great is that?
Art can bring with it good energy. It can be a reminder and an inspiration. A good reason to make it.
