1 “Who Is Not Engaged in Trying to Leave a Mark, to Engrave His Image

1 “Who is not engaged in trying to leave a mark, to engrave his image on the others and the world- graven images held more dear than life itself? We wish to die leaving our imprints burned on the hearts of the others.” R.D.Laing THE DRAWING: VERTIGO ”..In 1728 William Chelsdon, an English Surgeon, removed the Cataracts from the eyes of a thirteen–year–old boy born blind. Despite his high intelligence and youth, the boy encountered profound difficulties with the simplest visual perceptions. He had no idea of distance. He had no idea of space or size. And he was bizarrely confused by drawing and paintings, by the idea of a two– dimensional representation of reality.” Approximations: The skein of the intellect thrown across the world, drawing it into form: fragile exercise in speculation, almost as abstract as mathematics: a tentative hypothesis on what the world might be in its wholeness. Meditation between object and sensation - pure light, electric sensation taking form somewhere in the darkness of the head. Shifting patterns ruled into structures and significance through the structure of neurones the filter of memory. At this point, between everything and nothing: between empty formula and chaos - between language and a meaningless babble of random noise I approach this act of drawing. She is there, concrete enough this girl, a detached nakedness on a podium. Beautiful, I think; a full breast and the roundness of a female stomach plummeting secretly down and inviting the curve of the hand. The potential is so powerful. The same vertigo as the diver: poised on the edge of undisturbed whiteness, absolute perfection which my partial marks can only disappoint. Thrown back always on this, the most difficult moment - poised between abstraction and involvement: a numbness on my high diving board - the vertigo of endless possibility before choice. The whiteness is perfect, complete, pregnant with all possibilities like the leap of hope that takes us unaware in a new an unknown face not tarnished with the atmosphere of contact. Perfection does not allow form. Did God feel this fear and trepidation on the edge of creation? 2 I wonder if God is one of those creators who delights of the magic of ever changing form - the doing of it, or whether, like me, he is constantly dissatisfied. A heady dialectic this relationship of form to absolute - the divine joke of interdependence necessary for existence; the weakness woven into changing flesh is the tiny spark between everything and nothing. The almost human longing for a witness to see that it is good - pure being, like the white canvas, is lonely. Existence is its own necessity. But form arises from separation and birth is painful. My late twentieth century consciousness suffocates in possibility. Child of a deconstructed universe; of relativity and endless chatter of information faxed, photocopied, satellited and electronically stored all crying disconnection. Intellectual grasp without the experience that generates understanding. I am cowed before galaxies of possibilities and by utter fear of the absolutism of Modernism. Pure impossibility; the edge of madness balancing on the shifting and narrow ledge between form and meaning: the electrical, the chemical, the biological and my world. Hopeless, and yet so easy, to begin. Sharpening the pencil helps. The familiarity of any oft repeated ritual has its own comfort and gathers together the thoughts. I clean the house first; anything to avoid this confrontation with myself. I sharpen all the pencils, rearrange the flowers. Carefully taping the paper to the board. Arranging pencils, knife and eraser. Settle, only now lifting my eye to this new nakedness before me and with detachment move to - orchestrate the modulation of planes and surfaces. The room settles with silence and I close my eyes and prepare to plunge. School Notebook week 1 The tumult of bewilderment of the first day – papers and lists, new and old faces mingling- cries of greeting and exchanged holidays. Hesitant faces peer into the room, defensive one size me up; concerned ones wave crumpled lists and query the precise pencil required: lost ones seek a different class. Confident ones wander in talking to their friends ignoring me completely. I eye this selection of realities always overwhelmed by this possibilities of worlds, each with its own story and focus; each capable of hearing 3 different things. Different from last term and yet the same; student faces begin to merge into one another. With experience types of character begin to fall into categories – they tend to sit in the same place in the room; sometimes they even look the same and I have to constantly remind myself of their uniqueness, not imposing my experience of another onto them. It is like beginning a drawing, this same moment of pure potential before the plunge. I know that what I say and do this lesson will fix the character of the course for the whole term and can only be undone with difficulty; if I want quiet while I speak, a tidy room, order in their work, notes, I have to insist now; let it go and it is difficult to backtrack later. They already know about me: reputation of teachers is thumped out in a steady rhythm of bush telegraph. What is important to survival enters easily into conscious and slips unseen passed all intentions and lesson plans and speeches; does he give good grades or poor grades? Is he weak or strong? Can you get away with not handing work in? Can you miss a class without too much hassle? Does he know his stuff? As soon as they draw a line I see how they will do during the course (I am yet to find myself mistaken); the talented; the frighteningly efficient and good; the analytical and pedantic; the creative but disorganised; the timid; the bombastic; the weak; those who think they are better than they are. The sensitive and the really weak. Its frightening this sense of predestination – I can believe in horoscopes without difficulty – we are predictable to an alarming degree. What will I do?; the good get better and the weakest are not yet ready to learn since they haven’t yet worked out how to listen, to concentrate, to become aware. I can only be what I am; example is the only way to teach. My sympathy is always with the weak student who tries since here one is aware most visibly of what one has done. I have to pay attention to not neglect the good ones since ostensibly they don’t seem to need so much instruction. When we stop and I ask them to tell me about themselves I am always humbled and the variety of their background and experience: they have all worked, travelled and studies so much before wonder whether I can live up to their expectations? How can I connect with such a miriad of cultural differences? 4 LESSON 1 “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come” On Learning, how to hold a pencil and to see “Welcome - my name is Phillip; I’m a painter. All my work is based on the human figure – which is why I am here. Figure drawing and teaching figure drawing is what I like doing best – this class is great fun! What we’re going to do is, of course, impossible; you can’t learn to draw figures in just twelve weeks; I’ve been doing it for twenty five years and I’m just beginning to understand what’s involved and how I might begin. I can, however, show you how to learn: don’t expect to be able draw like Michelangelo at the end of the course - what I hope is that you’ll be beginning to make progress and that you’ll have understood the principles even if you can’t yet put them all into practise. Before we begin drawing I should like to talk a little about the process of learning: at school we’re expected to learn a great number of things yet, in my schooling at least, no one ever taught me how to learn. There’s an old English saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”. We learn only what we wish to when it is right for us. This is the first prerequisite of learning You’re here for your benefit; I can show you what to do, but, unless you are really involved, unless you really want it, you won’t learn and there’s nothing as a teacher that I can do about it You have to be actively involved in the process. Quality in anything arises from the integrity and involvement of the whole person The process becomes inefficient if the student ceases to experience him or herself as ‘responsible’ for the process and instead sees it as something that is being done to him or her. So, learning is an art; it is one that has to be learnt and practised like any other art and one that takes a conscious effort on our part. To begin with we pick it up unconsciously; as children we have a natural 5 desire and ability to learn, but then, in school, something happens: in many cases learning becomes disassociated from pleasure or usefulness and becomes a bind of boredom and necessity. The art of learning is ignored and the process becomes inefficient and haphazard. The second myth concerns what the work entails; many people approachdrawing in a sort of panic. They expend alot of energy and stay up late working, but this in itself can be counter productive if the energy is not focused in the right direction – like thrashing around in the water when you are learning to swim.

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