Last week I started to play a wonderful CD given to me by my friend Jo. A compilation of interesting, rhythmic Parisian, African, South American, ambient sounds. So good infact, that every single track is even better than the one before … which is totally fantastic! Winni and I had a great time dancing around the bedroom with plenty of facial gestures to accompany our moves. I also discovered that I can in fact lie down on the sofa and Winni will very happily carry on dancing or start drawing and that I can perhaps also just relax and supervise from a reclining position. This is tempting (of course?!).
At one point while I lay there watching her dance, marvelling at her rhythm and freedom of movement and the beautiful shapes she made in the space around her – I wondered about how I might capture that image and the feeling. I also chastised myself for not just being present and tried harder to ‘be in the moment’! Then, I just couldn’t help myself and… I got my mobile phone out and tried to take some pictures. But, my phone is on its last legs (there is a delay of about 3 seconds on the camera), and Winni is not particularly up for being photographed – why should she be! So I ended up with 8 completely blurred shots of her dancing.
The next day, at sleep time, which is when I sometimes get my hour or two to do something – I was sitting looking at a blank piece of fabriano paper. I had taped it up on my old drawing board which we recently moved from the bedroom where it has been ignored for some time to the sitting room where it will no doubt still get ignored but maybe not completely. I was thinking how nice it would be to start a painting or drawing if only I could think of something to work from. And then I remembered that I myself have said it’s ok to work from photos on more than one occasion – “so”… I thought, “why not work from photos? – anything. As long as it gets you started!”
I jumped up from my seat, trying not to think about it too much in case the thinking stopped the doing – got out my charcoals and with the phone in my left hand and a drawing implement in my right I started moving my right hand across the page – I flicked through the photos of Winni dancing and kept moving from one to another resting on each for a moment and making a mark in response to it on the paper. And then starting again. At some point I got paint out and did the same thing, working quickly across seven figures. Winni had on a wonderful stripy, long dress (sent by her great Aunty Tricia) and I used the colour in the dress to focus on making the shapes of her dancing. All blurred images but enough to get the sense of a figure and of movement.
High points were… really feeling her dancing and being transported back to the moment of watching her. Trying to capture the line of her neck and thinking how well I know that delicate neck; how it looks, feels, smells. I know that little leg and arm etc. etc. It was amazing to feel so engaged and alive with the subject and the process of making marks. Low points were really feeling the rustiness in my looking and my ability to make my implements do what I want them to do, to make the line curve in such a way as to suggest a tummy to make the shadow in the fabric suggest a swish of the skirt. etc. etc. But that’s all OK and to be expected.
Later that same evening I was sitting with Mike and Bill, they were playing chess and I was looking at my work on the drawing board. I had an intense little private moment about the whole process I had been through and… it was good. I wondered if this is what artists experience when they feel a compulsion to paint or draw. I can see I am trying to express so much in that little piece in front of me.
