The Graphic Medicine's monthly Drawing Together group met again today. After losing the plot a couple of meetings ago, when I got stuck once again on my lack of technical drawing skills (and yet I still don't try hard enough to improve them!), I was encouraged to return by the artist leading this month's session.
The Zoom invitation included a few words from Judith:
"Learning to draw, or more accurately, realising how to look at things, for me marked the beginning of being an artist.
For this Drawing Together session, I have prepared a sequence of prompts with which you will explore when you learned how to draw and how you formed a unique sense of yourself as an artist.
As the New Year begins and the days grow longer, let's draw closer to the light, together."
Asked to recall our first memory of ourselves, what came to mind was sitting on the floor in our flat on W 116th Street, watching Bugs Bunny on TV whilst eating a piece of cheese. We had just under 2 minutes to draw this one.
The second prompt (4 mins) was a bit more difficult at first - I had absolutely no memory of the first time I knew that I liked to draw. I started to get anxious again but, thank goodness, other options were then offered, including "whatever it is that makes you you". And I looked back and saw my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, and remembered how much from as far back as I go that I love taking pictures.
[the earliest QPR pic of mine I've found was taken with an Instamatic!
]Judith concluded with a story about a woman she'd visited in a nursing home who had told her a story. The story made the woman very happy. She told it again. And again. In the end, it was the only story she told, but it always made her happy. Judith spoke about keeping ourselves in the light, and asked us to draw a favourite memory, perhaps the one story that we would tell when we were in the home.
Dithering about which memory would steal drawing time, and we only had 10 minutes, so I took the first that came to mind.
It was the day a congregant invited my dad to view the local derby with neighbours QPR in an executive hospitality box at Stamford Bridge. I happened to be a QPR photographer on the pitch that afternoon. In those days there were few, if any, women shooting football matches, so I usually got a lot of abuse from the crowd. However, the R's fans began to recognise me after a while. At half-time I walked towards the away end, and some fans began chanting my name. My father was so proud and excited - his favourite team, his first-born on the pitch, her name being sung by several hundred fellow fans. I sometimes wonder if this was just a bit better than the day he blessed me in front of the ark when I was ordained. So, this is the drawing. And even though it probably wasn't on that day, I drew the floodlight, shining down on the away end.
In between each prompt we got the chance to look at each other's drawings, and hear the stories behind them. I love this group - people are kind and supportive and encouraging. I hope it continues in 2022!
PS Sorry about the faintness of the pencil. You might see the drawings better if you click on them. They get bigger too!
