I have just spent most of the afternoon composing a list of topics for students to choose from – not easy. Don't want too much detail at this stage, and I'm hopeless at educationspeak. (And artspeak too, if it comes to that.) I thought "The Skull beneath the Skin" sounded quite snappy for one of the headings, even if it's not original. Anyway, the list has gone off for comments, so that's that bit done. The rest of the afternoon was spent surfing "medical humanities"/ art/ anatomists/ museums. The16th century anatomist Andreas Vesalius is featured on a website called "Famous Belgians"…
It's been an interesting few days: went to Tate Liverpool to see the Glenn Brown exhibition – nine rooms' worth of paintings. It took us all day to go round, with a break for lunch – a very intense experience. Apart from all its' other attributes, the work is a masterclass in the manipulation of perception. Back home, looking at my old copy of "Eye and Brain" by RL Gregory I realise how out of date it is. Ditto Gombrich's Art and Illusion?? Must find something more up to date – if I can understand it.
Spent part of the weekend talking about medical education with friends – a GP and a just-qualifying new medic. They were enthusiastic about the idea of incorporating "proper" drawing into the student curriculum. When I got home I found an email from a colleague saying much the same things, so I hope I can deliver the results.
I also received an email image of a tiny votive figurine excavated locally by the husband of a friend. It dates from the 1st century AD, and they've called it Colin (don't know why). It's an amazing object – sorry; he's an amazing character – and I've spent all afternoon trying to capture the essentials of his appearance and charisma. He has a rather square jawline and his nose has gone giving him the appearance of a prizefighter (or gladiator?) Also, his feet and lower legs are missing. So far he's generated a couple of pages in the sketchbook and some unsuccessful monoprints, but I think he's got star potential.
I came away from our meeting last week full of ideas, and really keen to get going. My sketchbook is filling up rapidly – all those articles and postcards I stockpiled "just in case".
The main motif of the project is to expand the experience gained by students, to make them more aware of the societal/cultural aspects of "the body" in all its manifestations and deepen their understanding of its structure and function. Their course is already designed so that they do a lot of drawing -my job will be to enhance this, and get them to think outside the "scientific" box into which their intensive training thrusts them.
It's a truism to say that all professions/occupations etc. come with their own mindset and language. Part of a training programme always includes training people to think in a particular way – useful for them to do the job properly, but potentially restricting if applied to daily life. Anyone who chooses our module is going to have to be prepared to attempt a different kind of thinking (me too I suppose).
Our provisional list of topics includes investigation of structure, aspects of illustration, life, death, gender, the Universe and Everything. We might as well be comprehensive…
A colleague of a friend asked me last year if I was interested in doing a few life classes for medical students – my recent work has been based within the landscape but I have a long association with life drawing, did anatomy as a medical student myself; so I said "yes – probably – good idea, important for medics to have an understanding of the role of the body in art/culture – also dynamic demonstration of the uses of anatomy blah blah". .
However, it’s going to be much more than I anticipated. For an SSC the students select a topic, study it for four weeks and then produce evidence of their research (lots of drawings, reflective writing in sketchbooks in this case, I think) AND five thousand words of coherent writing. That’s almost as much as my Fine Art dissertation, for which two whole semesters were allocated.
This is going to be a big shift in my own artistic practice, although I've been looking for ages for an excuse to get away from the "landscape painter" pigeonhole I seem to have got myself into (although my paintings and prints aren't literal/traditional views of the countryside). Recently I've been trying to incorporate human elements into my work, albeit indirectly, so I hope that by the time this project comes to fruition (if it does!) the shift will have become a gentle slide.
