It’s my penultimate drawing day at both galleries and even after almost a year I am still overtaken by nerves prior to starting. What is that about? I know it hampers me, making me self-conscious, stiff and clumsy in both thought and deed. It is almost as if an hour or maybe even two have to pass before my mind and hand coordinate and move in harmony. And I’m doing all this stumbling in public. Agh – why do I do this to myself? Yet even as I write it I know the answer – because sometimes, but only sometimes, something magical comes out of it and I draw in a way that is beyond me.
Ruthin Craft Centre has three new shows – two that are principally ceramics and one textile. I settle my bean bag against a wall and begin. I like trying to capture the text with the artworks as it adds context. I’ve begun to see the pivotal role letters and words play in this gallery and like it. The white walls invite them. And they are designed so elegantly.
The doors open and it’s immediately busy. I overhear conversations, mostly from what I take to be practising or amateur potters, commenting on the processes to each other.
The main show is all about texture. The big pots which I’ve placed myself behind are superb. I love their graffito-ed surfaces and, as I’ve come to find over the last ten months, I almost pray for an empty gallery so that I don’t feel obliged to draw the visitors but concentrate on capturing the work. The curation, as always, is sublime.
These are what I take to be a husband and wife. She does most of the talking, with him pitching in now and again. They do the circuit of the gallery several times. It’s nice to see them so engaged.
There’s a lovely interplay between Matthew Harris’ textile pieces in Gallery 2 and the Natural (Re)Source exhibit in Gallery 1. And there’s lots of reading matter that enables me to draw the readers in the ubquitious hand behind back posture.
And once again I am intrigued as to why it is that it is mostly men who adopt this stance. Is it about containing the extremities of the body? And is it just a Western thing?
Drawing these outlined, empty figures has become a feature of this project. I never intended to do them. But it seems to convey the passing of bodies across the artworks, often indistinct from each other.
Few people talk to me and the ones that do merely ask what I am doing and move on. I tell them about the exhibition next month and they all say they will come. Is it just politeness? A daughter and her elderly mother come in. The mother is deposited on the seat in the middle of the gallery after they’ve both agreed that walking around the space will be too much for her. The daughter sits next to her. They both survey the exhibition. “It’s very nice,” says the mother, her hat still firmly on her head though the sun has come out outside.
This man and his wife also walk around the ceramic exhibits several times, but with this couple he is the one who does the talking. They are evidently planning on purchasing something. “I think this is my second favourite,” he says to his wife, “though would I want it on my window-sill?”
Sometimes there is only time to make a quick line and they are gone.
I can’t work out whether this piece behind the stripped tree trunk is metallic or fibre. I like it and the man leaning almost in sympathy with the white tree is a treat to draw.
I’ve written on Instagram about women and their handbags in galleries, though I’ve seen it more in RCC than in Oriel Davies. Do they feel a little exposed in this space, out of their comfort zones, so to speak? And if that’s the case, is this the reason that these carriers of their known physical life and needs are clutched so tightly?
The owner of this miniature Schnauzer, who he tells me is called Primmy, is one of the few visitors who talk to me today. He holds Primmy still while I try to draw her but thankfully doesn’t ask to see it afterwards.
One of the women on the desk brings over an artist friend of hers to meet me. We talk while her little boy tries to get her attention. Eventually she leans down to him and he whispers something in her ear. “He wants me to tell you that he’s just been to the dentist,” she says.
I arrive at Oriel Davies knowing that there isn’t a show on. I planned to come anyway, saying that I’d draw in the cafe or outside. With the rain outside, the cafe it is.
It’s an impossible window to draw, and yet how can I ignore it since it dominates the space? I sit too comfortably on the sofa, uncertain where to start. I’m a little adrift. I thought I’d enjoy the lack of obvious focus but I don’t. There are no boundaries. I have too much freedom. Help. But draw I must, so I begin by simply following the lines.
It’s nice to see the cafe being used by the people of Newtown. I love this gallery, truly I do – it’s so deliciously egalitarian and unpompous. A woman comes in with two companions. She wears a leopard-print top. They are clearly having a meeting. Are they town councillors?
More drawings of the window. I’m too discombulated to opt for anything more than a pencil.
Another couple come in who appear to know the cafe barista/Manager quite well. Perhaps they are daily regulars.
Deborah pops in to tell me that there’s a work experience girl in the Education Room painting Welsh symbols (or is it flags?) to cut up for bunting and that she’s told her I might go in and draw her. The prospect is not a happy one but I go and have a look anyway. And then I see them.
The posters from a children’s workshop fill the walls, and they are marvellous. What a delight. I plonk myself on the floor and get my crayons out. The work experience girl and I chat and I make an attempt to draw her leaning over the trestle tables but it’s the children’s drawings that captivate me. Oh, to draw as they do… Deborah comes to ask the work experience girl to search for a particular image on Google and tells me that the kids’ workshop theme was Angels and Footballers, a response to the Verrocchio Angel show. “They’ve been up for ages,” she says, “haven’t you seen them before?” I probably have but being too focussed on drawing in the gallery I must’ve overlooked them. I’m sorry for that. They are as good as, if not more so, than many an exhibition I’ve visited – if, the excitation of joy is any measure of good-ness, that is.
I’m growing tired as I always do on these drawings days. I think it’s the anticipation of what they will ask of me that saps my energy. I make a last drawing of the rows of hooks on the Education Room wall, all set at child’s height. Lovely. As is the inclusion of the red fire hose. I’ve come to love gallery paraphernalia…. I shall miss these visits. I’ve learnt so much about art spaces, the relationships that visitors have with them and the art works they show. But mostly I’ve learnt about drawing and how sometimes I don’t want to do anything else. There’s no doubt that it’s become my lifetime’s work, my labour of love.