The rain was lashing when I got to Ruthin. Who on earth would come out in this? I set up in Gallery Two, in the corner to the right of the back wall where a video of Helen Yardley was being projected. The carpets in this space were smaller, more like rugs and almost monochrome, with one wall dedicated to her design drawings. I’ve always liked this space; it’s more intimate, less exposed than Gallery One. I began drawing a set of three very Victor Passmore-esque works hanging on the opposite wall and waited.
I was in a prime position. That gorgeous pink (a colour that Helen Yardley refers as Watermelon Pink), red and khaki green carpet hanging on the far wall of the Gallery One was visible, framed by Gallery Two’s arch and I was ready to capture all the visitors who entered either from the reception and shop area or through the doorway from Gallery Three. A few people straggled through but the morning was quiet.
Generating the energy necessary to perform (and this is undeniably a performance) is tricky when nobody comes. Yes, I can draw the paraphernalia of the Gallery and indeed I did for a while, focussing my attention on the projector hanging about the doorway. But ultimately, I need life – beings, animate bodies – to fire up my creativity. And yet I knew that such hiatuses would be the reality of this project and that I’d have to make of them what I could. Then Philip Hughes, RCC’s director, came over to say hello, so I drew him.
In fact I drew him a few times.
His arrival stopped the sinking. It sounds overly dramatic but it is true. It takes a lot out of me to do this. I’m on show, I’m performing and I need people to observe and respond to. So, until they came, Philip was my quarry. I like the permission that this project gives me to be brazen about drawing people outright. I’m a naturally diffident person and if someone that I’m drawing notices me I often lose my flow and even stop. Most humour me – some smile, some ask outright “Are you drawing me?” some look away, and some (like the woman in the Tate St Ives café saying very loudly, “I can’t bear being drawn,”) shift their positions entirely so that I could no longer see them. It’s their prerogative, of course and from their perspective it may be seen as a kind of stealing. Whereas I see it more as a celebrating – a desire to know, to understand, to empathise, to enter into the spirit of someone’s life and experience through the capturing of their features, their stance and the way they engage with the environment they find themselves in. Perhaps I am being fanciful.
After lunch the trickle of visitors became a more satisfactory stream. Mostly middle-aged couples, many took advantage of the bench in front of the projected film to rest and, ultimately, to watch.
Many were regular visitors. “I never miss a show,” one woman said, “they’re always so good.”
Helen is an articulate woman (I can vouch for this because I must’ve heard the audio from the film about thirty times during that day) and the people who set themselves before it listened attentively. Many were quiet, gentle women like the one who came with her husband who initially asked me if I was the artist. “Yes,” I said, misunderstanding her completely. “How does it feel to see all your carpets exhibited like this?” was her reply.
It always interests me to hear how people expect artists to behave. Would Helen Yardley go to the trouble of sitting in a corner of the gallery, as I was, to make drawings of her work when she could be doing so (if she felt so inclined) from the comfort of her studio? It is sweet though. And in both RCC and OD people have asked me the same question over and over. After we had each laughed at the mistake she went on to tell me how she’d had to ‘work’ on her husband to get him to come that day. “Going to see a load of carpets on a rainy Tuesday was not exactly an exciting prospect for him, ” she said. “It was the same with the silversmithing show and the Andrew Logan one.”
I watched him looking at the work. Did he like it?
I observed them part go to different ends of the galleries and then come together again – it was like a kind of slow dance. They’d talk about the pieces (particularly the drawings) in low voices or just stand there in silence, looking.
As they left he’d wrapped his arm around her.
The visitors engaged with me more than they’d done when I was working in Gallery One. Perhaps it was, as I’ve said, the intimacy of Gallery Two, or maybe after the watching the video they were inspired to talk and share their thoughts. One particular man stood in front of the projected video for sometime before turning to me and saying, “it reminds me of the women in Darjeeling with their hands moving so fast making the carpets.” He went on to tell me of the many trips he and his wife had made India in order to ride on their narrow gauge railways. This particular trip had involved a journey on Darjeeling’s Himalayan Railway during which he’d seen a group of women weaving carpets. A real railway enthusiast (he was the second one I’d encountered that day) he waxed lyrical about this passion for some minutes while I drew him.
“Perhaps I ought to go and find my wife,” he said eventually.
Wednesday at Oriel Davies proved to be even more of a challenge. I’d been warned that there they would be between shows but I’d expected at least some footfall. The opening of the long-awaited café (Relish, their original café, had closed as a result of Covid, I believe) had been a short-lived affair, sadly. So the only thing to tempt people to visit was the shop and the opportunity to make angels to paste on the gallery’s windows in anticipation of the next show (a National Gallery Masterpiece loan of Verrocchio’s Tobias and the Angel). I laid out my pens and paints on a table in the vacated café, made a quick sketch of Carol at the reception desk before embarking on a drawing of the bus station outside and waited for something to happen.
The gallery, in an effort to save money, had turned down the heating and it was freezing. My spirits sank.
I always try to generate opportunities to ‘warm-up’ prior to beginning a reportage session. Embury and Minchiniello in their book Reportage Illustration endorse the importance of this. For me it’s not only about loosening up my hand and sharpening my brain but trying to slough off the fear and self-consciousness. Finding adequate places to observe and draw people is not easy. En route to Ruthin there’s a Starbucks and a ‘Drive-thru’ coffee place at Rhug, though at 8 am they are far from busy. Newtown is trickier. There’s a Costa Coffee but it’s dark and with lots of blind corners.
Jack’s Café proved a better option and I spent an hour there drawing the series of mainly men reading papers or their phones and drinking coffee.
But it was a loosening-up that was fast threatening to go to waste once I got to the Gallery. Then a woman came in having planned to hold a business meeting in the café. She let me draw her as she texted her client.
After about half an hour a man came in through the front door and marched straight to the reception. Hearing him ask after me (“What’s the name of the artist working here?”) I recognised him as the ex-teacher who I’d had a long chat with the last time I’d been there. He’d come in specially to show me a printout he’d got about Shani Rhys James’s mother. His arrival made my day. And I drew him and drew him and drew him.
(At one point I even followed him into the shop where he’d gone to enquire about some Chinese ink.)
A thoroughly engaging man, he told me he’d been a steel worker in Port Talbot before becoming a teacher and that he’d spent some time living in France. Seeing me draw him he asked “How much are you getting from this grant – perhaps you should give me some?” I didn’t want him to go: he’d brought energy and a frisson of jocular banter to my morning. “Can I go now?” he asked, grinning. Reluctantly I had to acquiesce.
A few people dribbled in, mostly to look at Christmas cards and gifts.
Others came expecting an open café but soon left.
For the all the disappointment of it, drawings were still made. And that was, is, the important thing. And next month there is my final encounter with Helen Yardley’s work at RCC and OD’s ‘Angel’ show to look forward to.
Onwards.