I’d decided the month before that I would spend another day drawing Ruthin Craft Centre’s Animal Rites exhibit. I wobbled a bit over my decision – after all I’d had such an energetic and, to be frank, enjoyable time drawing the ceramic creatures at my last visit that I worried that I would be tempting fate to try and reenact it. Reminding myself over and over that it was up to me and that there was no right or wrong way of approaching drawing, I laid my things out at the opposite end of Gallery 3 and began to look. Just before I began drawing the textile artist Nigel Hurlstone popped his head round the corner. I haven’t actually met him but we’d spoken on the phone when I’d interviewed him for a feature with Embroidery magazine. He was as delightful in the flesh as he was over the phone. Just before he left me he shared an anecdote about when he was a student in Manchester. He’d gone to draw in the Cathedral, in the Remembrance Chapel. The person in charge said that that was fine, but strictly ‘no wet media’. Oh, that’s Ok, Nigel had replied, saying that he only used a little emulsion on the page as a base. After the man had gone, he then proceeded to knock over the bottle of paint all over the floor. “I spent the whole day trying to clean up the white. I think it’s still there to this day.”
Susan O’Byrne’s hare captivated me – how could it not, it is sublime. Becoming more sanguine about whether there are visitors to draw or not, I’ve got used to giving myself over to the artworks – so much so that sometimes when people come into the galleries I’m not in the right mindset to capture them. The hare, the birds (is that a hoopoe?) and the view through the window absorbed my attention so completely that the quick pencil rendition of the woman looking at them was rather ill-considered.
I love the curation of this show: the animals appear to converse and delicious narratives unfold.
With the sun out visitors were initially thin on the ground. (Though sitting by the constantly opening door, I froze; at one point my teeth were chattering – that’s reportage drawing for you.) And those that came didn’t stay long in Gallery 3; I didn’t mind but I was bemused – couldn’t they see the ceramicists’ skill? Most who came were of a certain generation and generally consisted of small groups of women, friends, mothers & daughters with only a scattering of men. I overheard one woman saying to her companion, pointing at each animal as she did, “I’d display that but not that,” adding, “the crows, I just couldn’t live with.”
I’ve written before about the challenge of setting the context of Gallery 3 within my drawings: there’s so much going on outside, and because the windows dominate, not only dividing up the space but providing it with sharply defined floods of light, the view of the outside pergolas and benches cannot really be ignored. But, as with all drawings, it’s about what to include and what to leave out. Having to work fast, I often make the wrong decisions (though didn’t I just say that there’s no such thing as wrong in drawing?) but try to keep going regardless, following Paul Hogarth’s rule of leaving the judgement till another day.
As an antidote to my slowness of reaction to the bodies that floated through the gallery in front of me, I mostly drew them with dip pen and ink. Few people stopped to talk to me, except for one woman who showed genuine interest in the pot with sponge that I use to clean my dip pens. She explained that she used to be an art teacher. Clearly still drawing, she pointed to all my paraphernalia strewn across the floor and smiled, “I’m always told off for spreading all my things out like that.”
Sometimes I reached for a pencil or a small brush to make a line wash. At this point a woman in a red gingham dress came in with another equally neatly dressed woman who appeared to be her mother. Perhaps they didn’t see me there in the corner; either way, the one who seemed to be her mother broke wind rather loudly. Both women giggled and moved on.
Ah, the hare again….there’s never time to do these marvellous beings justice and I must spend my next visit with Jeanette Orrell’s Indigo Drawings and then there’s Zoe Preece’s whiteness to explore…..how I love this gallery.
All too often the plans I have in my head as to what to focus on and where to sit go awry. I’d gone to Oriel Davies intent on drawing the Lithography show but when I got there it just seemed too formal, too squared and too rectangular. Having been told by Deborah at the desk that they’d decided to keep Nicky Ascott’s temporary studio up in Gallery 2, I wandered in there. There was a lot to take in. Another wobble until I saw the typewriter that had been placed on a little cupboard with the words (in pink) “Please use this typewriter to make your comments” (or something like it). It was enough. Having procured a bean bag, I set up my stall in the corner and began to draw it.
With the sun keeping most people outside, I was left to my own devices for much of the day. As I’ve come to find with this project, being forced to sit and look and capture the art work before me has taught me to engage with it on a deeper level. I begin to know it, even like it, by drawing it.
The bits of furniture that Ascott had dotted around the room were a wonderful counterpoint to the very painterly drawings and canvases either hanging or leaning against the wall.
Alas, I fear that, as with RCC the day before, portraying the visitors became of secondary concern. And there were so few. Most, not being prepared to give its eclectic-ness time to sink in opted for the safer ground of the Lithography show in the main gallery.
Giving myself over completely to Ascott’s fascinating reference wall, I drew each little note, postcard, object, fetish and book – even trying to relay the hand-written scrawls that define her paintings.
I’m amazed at how much I’m learning from facing the challenge of not only reportage-drawing visitors to the galleries but encapsulating the art spaces too. I feel so blessed by the opportunity to develop my drawing practice that this project has afforded me. Thank you RCC, OD and ACW.
(Photographs: Pip Jones)