The art class convened on Saturday despite an unseasonable blizzard. Artists are not wimps.  Even though it was necessary to hack the way out of the driveway with an ice pick, the ladies showed up. Fortunately, Dear A, ever the gentleman, donned his Wellingtons and did the manly thing while I finished my toast and tea.

I showed them Leonard Cohen’s drawings in his book of poetry, The Book of Longing. I’d tried to draw myself one day inspired by Leonard’s drawings of himself. It’s something I never do and I set up a small mirror and drew away. Flattery had to be abandoned; we must face facts. The drawing is a little off…but not that far.

All the ladies love Leonard and we often listen to him when we draw. I wanted to show them the way the arts intersect and feed each other. And also that we can do whatever we feel like doing.

Sally was the only member of our esteemed group who didn’t make it, save for Mimi who was on vacation. Sally left for a business trip to New Orleans last week when it was nearly seventy . Her apparel, a dress, sandals and shawl was doubtless a fine example of her usual fine style. She was wearing the same when she flew back Friday night into the blizzard in Boston. When the plane was just about to run out of gas it was diverted to Bangor, Maine. She and her boss stayed overnight in a hotel; the next morning he rented a car and they began an icy drive to Boston. Sally, whose visual perception has doubtless been improved by years of drawing practice, noticed that said boss’s driving skills were making the drive a perilous and possibly final one. The intrepid Sal, still in sandals and shawl, asked to be let off at the train station and arrived home just as our class ended.
But she called, which means all members of the class were accounted for even in this most inclement weather.

One last thing, when the subject of hacking the car out of ice banks came up, I said. ‘Thank God for the chaps.’

My ladies rolled their eyes. They’d dug their cars out themselves. True warriors, which is what you need to be if you are an artist.

When I was looking at everyone’s work in the drawing class on Saturday I had to think of the great synergy that happens when artists get together to make art and to share their inspirations and journeys. We all did work we wouldn’t have done otherwise because we had the chance to be inspired by each other and to get a boost from the energy in the class.

One of the students, Maureen, is going to Paris next month and lent me the video, Paris Was Yesterday. It’s the story of a group of gay women, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Janet Flanner, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier and others who were catalysts for emerging modernism in the early part of the 2oth century. Stein bought Picasso paintings before anyone else would touch them. Sylvia Beach published James Joyce when he was hounded out of England for his use of obscenity in his writing. (Dear A, Literature Professor and man of taste and insight par excellence, thinks Joyce is not all he was cracked up to be. You only want to read Ulysses once, if at all, for sure. But Joyce did show us, as all the early modernists did, that we can play and break the mold in any way we want. A big thank you to them.)
Change came from this synergy of creative people gathering together not just from those who burst out of the pack like Picasso and Matisse. They were perhaps the most dogged and devoted and gifted of practitioners but their wider group nourished them.

I pulled out a book I’ve had for ages, Kiki’s Paris / Artists and Lovers 1910-1920. Kiki was a model for many of the artists in Paris at that time and there are hundreds of photos in the book. Here is a drawing of Matisse teaching at his Academy and a photo of some of the ladies in his class at a cafe afterward.

Can we bring back cafe society, please? And hats? That’s Kiki above in the fabulous hat. All of this one hundred years ago but it looks like more fun than we’re having now. We haven’t had great fun clothes or a sense of cultural joie de vivre since the sixties. It’s time, n’est-ce pas? (And we won’t get political here but there are correspondences.) Well, change is coming and I suspect it’s going to be grand and amazing. Keep praying.
Well, here’s to the continuation of creative endeavor and to all who practice art in whatever form and all who support it. It’s about changing consciousness in a positive way. Who knows our part in the creation of peace and joy on the planet? But it’s possible. Oh, yes.

In class this Saturday we spent some time drawing plants again. After we had four or five drawings I suggested that we rip one up. It’s easy to fuss over our work and to attach to what we’ve done, we all do it, so everyone hesitated. It was optional but soon we were all ripping and tossing tiny fragments of drawings in the air like confetti. It was very liberating.

I once spent a few years writing a novel. It was not the only thing I was working on but I put plenty of time and energy into it. I really wanted to get it right, whatever right was and I believed if I kept working at it I would get it right. But it wasn’t right and in the end I had to let it go.

Why wasn’t it right? Was I not talented enough? I believe we all have everything we need to do what we feel called to do, just as I believe that anyone who shows up at class with the intention of drawing and making art and exploring their own creativity has everything they need to succeed. My novel was challenged because I was still in the learning process. But, instead of letting it go when it became clear it was not hanging together in an easeful way, I held on tight. I didn’t yet know that there was an infinite supply of other things to write and that it’s far more effcetive to just start something new.

I held on because I had thoughts like—I don’t want this time to be wasted, if this isn’t working then maybe I’m not good enough (horror + renewed effort), and then, I’m good enough so I will make this work. But we can’t force art and most of the time it works because we get out of our way. We get out of the place of thinking and into the place of receiving and flowing. The time is never wasted because every minute we spend on our art hones our skill and our ability to see what we’re doing. That’s when the mind comes back in to reflect and sharpen.

One of the students said she’s afraid when she does something good that it will be the best she ever does. But once we get to a certain level, we never go back. We all have an infinite supply of creativity that flows through us. It’s not ours, we are just opening up to it. And we’re always practicing opening up and letting go of the mind and its judgments as we also practice honing our skills.

So, as in life, letting go is what enables us to move forward. It’s very empowering to rip a few things up from time to time.

On another note, I turned a charcoal drawing over and laid it on my pad to demonstrate what I wanted the class to draw next. I discovered after drawing on the back side of my paper that the old drawing had made the most beautiful ghostly image on the fresh sheet of paper underneath, so I drew on that, then did a series of drawings using that technique. A happy accident. So it’s good not to rip everything up!

In drawing class this week I had everyone work from photographs of flowers again. The class is most comfortable drawing nature and this gives us the chance to work on skills and to think about how we might like to use color in a strong expressive way. We looked at art in a book of prints and studied how other artists approached using both color and line. We experimented with making our drawing in a pale line then going back into it with color and deepening the lines if we wanted to do that.

At the end of the morning one woman said the class had changed her life. She’s a brilliant colorist but had never drawn before. The distance she’s come in a few months is amazing but more amazing is the way we are all coming forward together. It’s not just mutual support for what we’re doing but joining together to play and explore in the spirit that everyone has something brilliant to bring forward.

I’m taking that brilliance seriously. I’m intending we grow our art to the point that we can bring forward whatever we want to express. We’re studying boldness. There are so many ways we’ve all been shut down, so many ways our spirits have been tamed, especially we women. We’re all about being wild again. We’re moving beyond any need for approval or permisssion and letting it rip. We’re giving weight to nothing but the spirit that moves us. Hooray.
The image here was made first in pastel in class, then scanned and posterized in Photoshop. Just to make it bolder and brighter. We’ll explore digital printing as we go on.

At last Saturday’s art class I put up two huge pieces of kraft paper on the wall to make a drawing surface eight feet square. None of us had drawn that big before and the idea was to catch the feeling of expansiveness. I decided that we would collaborate on a drawing by stepping up one at a time and adding to what the previous person did. Before we began we looked at some photographs of plants. Most of the class are comfortable drawing nature.

I went first and I have to say it was very liberating to work so large and throw the whole body into every line. We are so habituated to restriction in so many areas of our lives that it was great to just let it rip.

But there was hesitation too. Doubtless some wondered if they might be judged even though I kept saying it doesn’t matter what you do. But everyone stepped up and drew large. Once we’d each put something up there they worked on the picture together.

Then I taped a large piece of paper on the wall for each person and they did their own drawings. One of the students had a huge breakthrough. She let herself go. Two students had a crisis of faith. They questioned what they’d done.

What was truly wonderful was that both of them expressed their doubts, each in their own way. The truth is we all have them and they are sneaky, snakey things that insert themselves whenever we get out of our place of practice and assumed perfection. It’s when we head into whole new territory that the voice of unreason tells us we can’t do that, our work sucks. But it’s when we’re out there that we know we’re going somewhere. Art is new. It’s the discovery that comes with faith. We have to step into the void. It turns out to be fun.

Above a wee bit of paper torn from a large drawing.

‘Common sense is the enemy of romance’ Oscar Wilde

In an art blog in The Guardian this morning Cathy Lomax, who’s founded an artzine called Arty, proposes that art now shift to the romantic. There’s not been much romance in art for the last twenty years. Art’s been all about minimal, conceptual and SERIOUS. It seems like fun couldn’t possibly be art. And that love can’t be fun.

Lomax remembers a teenage, secret fondness for the novels of the all-too-tacky Barbara Cartland—

“She had very large eyes in a heart-shaped face and her hair under her plain, unfashionable bonnet was the colour of ripening corn. Her eyes surprisingly were not blue but, unless he was mistaken, the grey of a wintry sea.” (Love for Sale - Barbara Cartland)

He was probably mistaken, but never mind. I love the idea of a new art movement that is F.U.N. It isn’t a common sense idea, of course.
www.artymagazine.com

The day before class last Saturday one of our members called to ask if her husband might take her place as she had another commitment. I’ve met her husband many times socially. Scott’s a lovely man and a consultant, as it turns out, to government agencies. I knew he drew very little and I expected we ladies would offer encouragement.

Scott arrived at class and the ladies all welcomed him. This Saturday I’d decided we’d work on our life drawing skills. Most of the members of the class are more comfortable with drawing from nature but I think we need to be comfortable, fearless even, in drawing everything.

I posed and they drew. Afterwards when I went around to see what they’d done I discovered Scott had done the most beautifully rendered, accurate drawings. The ladies, meanwhile, were aghast at the way the proportions in their drawings had gone distinctly overboard. Then we did an exercise of drawing from our heads. Again everyone struggled, save for Scott. He drew a series of imaginative, bang-on portraits, more full of character than the ones I, the teacher, drew.

I asked Scott if he drew often. No, not since childhood, he said, but then he’d spent hours making carefully rendered drawings. Clearly drawing is like riding a bicycle, wherever you get with it stays with you.

Meanwhile the ladies were feeling, I think, a little frustrated. In fact, some of their drawings became less confident as the morning went on. What does it mean when we’re confronted with someone whose skills are more developed and appear to have been effortlessly acquired? Can we still assert ourselves and march boldly forward? Or do we shrink?

So, I’m thanking Scott for giving us the opportunity to march boldly forward. In the ladies’ drawings it was plain to see spirit and strength emerging because they kept trying despite discouragement. That’s just as important as what our drawings look like and far, far more touching.

Our drawing class started up again on Saturday with some new members. We spent some time doing abstract drawings so we could get the feel of everybody’s hand and explore the pure possibility of line and shade. Then we moved onto imaginary landscapes and tried to bring those lines, smudges, shadings into them. I think the new people were relieved; their drawings didn’t have to look like anything. But it can be hard to just play too. It looks like we’re not going anywhere but inspired play is so necessary to art and creativity.

Once again we listened to The Essential Leonard Cohen. The art got bolder.

That same night, by chance, Dear A and I watched Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man. It’s half documentary, half concert. The director interviews Cohen and various artists perform his songs to varying degrees of success. But the words really open you up. The best performance was the last, when Cohen performed with U2, Bono and the rest ever so respectful.The devotion of all the artists in the film was just great.

Cohen says he considers himself to be a minor writer. I wouldn’t say that but the devotion to just doing the work day after day is major inspiration. I’m going to assign the film for homework.

Our drawing class met last Saturday again and I dreamt up a few new things for us to explore. It’s a nonlinear class; the idea being that whatever we do serves the greater good and practice yields gifts of skill and insight. It surprises me how thrilling it is for everyone. We’re just drawing, after all. Some of the class haven’t drawn since childhood and others have drawn off and on. I’m the teacher and I’ve drawn for a living for thirty years and it’s as thrilling for me as it is for them.

It’s because we’re going somewhere. And every time we do something new we take notice but don’t attach. We’re practicing staying open to inspiration and seeing what comes next. There’s no judgment, only discernment. We look to see what we’ve done and for each of us it’s different, without fail.

On Saturday we practiced drawing faces. I showed them how to draw a simple oval and then draw a face in a stylized way. We cranked up the music, something full of longing this time—Leonard Cohen. Something to open the veins of feeling. And everyone did something interesting with such a simple exercise.

Two people had real artistic breakthroughs. They did work beyond what they thought they could, beyond expectation. True creative exploration that surprised us all. It’s what happens when people gather together in good spirit to focus on doing something for themselves. To just be and experience. Now we take that same spirit into our lives. It all gets curiouser and curiouser.

We met again on Saturday, the lovely ladies of the art class and I. One of our group did not appear, claimed by the season, no doubt. We began, as usual by sharing inspiration—things that have happened in our time apart to open our hearts, or beautiful things we’ve found to open our eyes.

Connie told of being honored on her last day of work at the alternative school she has helped to nurture into a superb learning environment for elementary school kids. She is so nurturing, she takes so much pleasure in the delights of others. When she finds her way now into public education she will be a gift of inspiration and positive change.

I had a card from a friend this week with news of fabulous, long-lost friend, Sandy Wilson. On the front was a painting by her son, on the back a wee photo of Sandy in ‘a room of her own’. She made the brilliant film, My American Cousin, some years ago. We were great friends in our twenties but lost touch when single motherhood consumed us both. Now I have her address and have sent up a flare.

I enclosed a tiny photo of myself in my own room. I love how she, out on the west coast, and me here on the east, separated by time and space enter our rooms to create what we will create, all these years later, still with devotion. And we’ve claimed those rooms of our own. Can’t wait to hear back.

Meanwhile, in class, we didn’t get to what I’d planned for us to draw. We drew again in an abstract way, this time leaving space in the center of the page, allowing emptiness to be the center. Everyone was so engrossed in what they were doing we just carried on, all one with the moment. The energy was flowing. It’s a powerful thing when you just let it flow through you without expectation, without control. It’s a holy experience and why we are blessed to meet together to do this. I think it’s taken us all by surprise.