I’ve loved the Ruthin Craft Centre shows over this last month or so. Their curation and use of space has been terrific. As has their diversity, with the energy and animation of Animal Rites set against the quiet intelligence of Jeanette Orrell’s Indigo Drawing and the elegiac stillness of Zoe Preece’s In Reverence.
In fact I made two visits to RCC in June – one to work with the Animal Rites for a second time and the other because Pete Telfer of Culture Colony was to film me there.
It’s hard enough drawing in public but having a camera trained on you while you are doing so makes it doubly difficult. Somehow I found an inner reserve of courage and bravura and just got on with it, camera or no camera.
Typically the gallery was quiet while the filming was taking place and Gareth from behind the desk had to be roped in as ‘pretend’ visitor. I liked drawing him, and he was stiller than most.
Jeanette Orrell’s drawing is gorgeous: it was a joy to transcribe their marks on paper using ink, crayon, chalk and wax.
Visitors passed like shadows across the painterly surfaces of her hanging textiles.
It fascinates me how each exhibition creates a different spatial narrative and mood. And how in turn the visitors respond to this.
I adore being given permission – as Indigo Drawing gave me – to make free-flowing inky and painterly gestures. And I appear to have developed a habit of making the viewers of these shows into predominantly ghostly outlines. It’s partly to do with the fact that they are moving – in some cases, quite fast – so there isn’t time to draw more than a silhouette. But it’s also about the dominance of (and indeed my interest in) the art on show.
I liked how the pattern on this man’s shirt reflected the organic shapes of Orrell’s work.
My last visit to RCC was to be all about Zoe Preece’s In Reverence. Each of the three galleries has their own ambience and personality. Gallery Two, with its lack of windows and natural light creating a sense of separateness, is darker – more sombre in a way – and colder. Sitting there in the corner on a bean bag it was the shadows that really spoke to me, creating a kind of grey negative space.
With strong resonances of Rachel Whiteread’s inner shapes of houses and objects, Preece’s whiteness – some in piles, and others lifted up and singled-out on shelves – was almost impossible to render.
Visitors mirrored its stillness and hushed restraint in their behaviour. Few people spoke. People peered in, holding their arms close to their bodies. “I long to touch,” said one woman.
The chairs and tables – surprising the whiteness with their warm browness – invited intimacy till one saw that they were exhibits and not for using. I didn’t read about the show’s intended meaning – I rarely do, finding statements tiring – preferring instead to form my own narrative. The domestic ordinariness of the objects, raised as they were to iconic stature, was glorious.
I found it hard to integrate the drawings of the visitors with those of the space. They were two different kinds of discipline – one quiet, almost studious, the other fast and scratchy.
What a lot of women clutching handbags there seemed to be.
Here’s another….
The first drawing I made. I fussed over it. It takes a while to warm up, to find my bravery.
And this one was my last. I was spent, drained. Everything had been packed away except for this one sketchbook and a pencil. She sat down to read the blurb. It was her pumps with their bows that caught my eye and then the contained way she folded her arm across her stomach as she read. Her mien encapsulated the exhibition for me. Reverent? Most certainly.
I was nervous about engaging with Oriel Davies’ new show, the Disability Arts Cymru Prize. It can be tricky to find a focus in a mixed show with no real overarching theme. And, to be honest I find it hard to draw wall-after-wall of small framed 2D artworks.
I was pleasantly surprised. The work was diverse and rich. “Heart-warming,” one visitor said.
But, as with Zoe Preece’s show at RCC, OD’s space dominated my drawings. There was no way round it. The gallery space described and delinated the exhibition – told its story, so to speak. And for me, the chairs set out for visitors along with the labels, the cameras, fire-exit signs and those ‘Borrower-like’ like doors in the panels with their tiny keyholes were all part and parcel of the visual experience.
The flow of bodies visiting the show was a irregular one. And the ones that came moved through the space rapidly.
As with my drawing at RCC, I became so involved with drawing the art and the spaces that contained it that trying to capture the visitors became almost secondary.
I rushed to make a drawing of this man however, as he grabbed one of the gallery chairs so that he could sit and compose a text. It was a long-winded affair with every letter being considered and slowly, painstakingly, typed in.
And then a familiar face turned up. He didn’t recognise me though we’d met twice before and had had long chats. “What are you doing?” he asked. When I explained, he remembered. “Ah,” he said, “I said a bientot last time, didn’t I?”
To iterate, the visitors to the gallery mostly whizzed around the exhibits. These two women however, took their time. The film showing in the semi-boxed in room behind where I was sitting was of particular interest.
A small girl and her mother came in. The girl was carrying a huge toy dog under her arm.
Prior to that an elderly woman had raced in and raced out again wearing full PPE, including a face guard. A large Co-op swung from her arm.
I drew this man in the cafe during a short break. Drawing becomes compulsive, particularly on one of my gallery days. I see things differently afterwards, everything is heightened.
These monthly endeavours are always more rewarding than I envisage, and the nervous energy they expend on them is worth it. Am I getting better? I don’t know. Each time I start I feel like I am back to square one. But I suppose that is the nature of practice, any practice. Till next time then.