Views from a window...

Every opportunity during waking hours, no matter where one finds oneself, is an occasion for looking and seeing, and for drawing. This is a drawing I made 22 years ago from my study window, of a slice of my back yard in wintertime. It is pencil, ink and watercolour. The outlook was familiar, one I saw every day, and yet one which provided constant surprises. On this particular day, the sun shone onto the derelicted fence and shrubbery which provided a rich tracery that contrasted with the simple slice of interior. The cold, watery orange of the sunlight showed a promise of spring renewal and growth.

At this time of my life I spent a lot of my time looking out windows. Car windows on the way to work, the windows at work, the windows from my house. It seemed as if views from windows were a constant condition and limit to what I saw of the world.

A window is an aperture from an interior world to an exterior one. There is a long tradition in painting, of combining interior with exterior worlds. Inside and outside; safety, comfort and familiarity of the domestic sphere and the beckoning lure of adventure in the outside world; control and loss of control.

This drawing is made from a friend's studio window a couple of years ago. What was most amazing is to sit inside a chaotic interior, full of bits and pieces of her collections, and observe how her uncontrolled interior spilled into the external lanscape - one with its own regulated environment arranged along natural organizational principles.

It is a privilege to be allowed into another person's personal space, to look outside their window from inside their specific comfort zone.

This simple drawing, in pencil, is my attempt to come to grips in being inside a chaotic interior environment, my effort to find an equilibrium for myself. The act of drawing helped in this quest.

Walking about...

Looking and drawing can be a simple activity of stopping where one walks, cradling the sketchbook on the knee and making relaxed casual marks of notation of what is in front of one.

The intention was not to make a masterful drawing, but to note the character of related objects one sees, and to give enough information to use the drawing as reference at a later date.

This sketch used up about ten minutes of my walk on the dike near my house. The pencil and sketchbook were in my purse, the path was dry and I sat on the ground with crossed knees supporting the sketchbook. The sketchbook is 9 by 12 inches, a good size for both full page drawings or pages of small studies.

Some people prefer to use a camera for note-taking. I do not. I far prefer to use my own eyes to make decisions to simplify, include, or leave out, and find the discipline of doing so useful. The action of drawing allows time to meditate on what is seen and helps build visual memory as well.

There can be immense pleasure and engagement to be had in drawing from life, whether of draped or undraped forms. To my mind the main difference between drawing still, fixed forms and living figures, is the sense of being on the spot with a living being entity and engaging fully and minutely in seeing this being as it morphs in movement in front of one and changes form, whether slowly or quickly the still, while inanimate objects yield opportunity for more leisurely attention and study.

Seeing requires suspension of judgement and supression of tendencies to verbalize; it requires one to enter a meditative state and surrender attention to the phenomena one gazes upon. The closest I can explain it is to say one uses the eyes to savour what is present to one's vision as might a gourmet or oenophile use tastebuds and sense of smell to minutely and intimately asess what is being tasted. To see is to be repeatedly surprised. To draw what is "seen" is to note new discoveries, and is an opportunity to find the surprise in the familiar or the commonplace.