Drop that fear…

#MyThursdayThing

Have you ever paid attention when a child is drawing something that they see or imagine? Their version of a face, a chair, a house, a car or any scene from their imagination? Have you ever noticed the bold uninhibited lines? Their detailing, the visual stories? When was the last time you saw a child draw? Those who have kids at home or in extended family/circle would have seen a lot of art from kids, I am sure.

 I experience kids’ art very closely. For one, I have my nieces and a nephew in my family (all less than 10 years of age) but more than that I have more than a dozen kids I teach art to, twice a week.  I see their responses to an idea and how they take it to another level. Their stories and then their colours add magic to their drawing sheet.  It is sheer pleasure, a visual treat to work with them. There is a famous quote from Picasso, “Every child is a born artist” and I so believe in it. However, as kids progress in the education system, most of them shy away from the drawing that they so uninhibitedly did a few years ago. Somehow, I feel, the right and wrong, good and bad, this way and that way come in between. But the one reason I see—perhaps the single most important cause—for children to abandon art in general or drawing in particular is fear of mistakes and a loss of spontaneity.

I realised this even more so in the last two weeks, when I happened to attend a spontaneous drawing workshop by artist Gopika Nath. The 10-day workshop was conducted on WhatsApp and had exercises which were aimed at making one shed inhibition and experiment with different techniques and mediums and tools. For example, we had to draw to music with eyes closed, or we had to see video clips of dance performances and draw quick one-second sketches or draw directly with a pen without lifting  the pen from the paper, even draw with different tools other than pen/pencil/brush, like a jhadutilli (a twig from a broom) or a stone or a piece of cardboard. Whatever one fancied, one could use. The most interesting for me was drawing with the non-dominant hand and blind contour drawings.

This meant drawing with a pen directly with my left hand and also drawing without looking at the paper and without lifting my pen. These were timed exercises and I had such fun. The results were childlike and bold. Drawing directly with pen on my sketch book gave me such confidence that I had never experienced before despite drawing and sketching now for many years. The one thing that this exercise enabled in me was letting go of the fear of that line on paper. Whatever came out on the paper was spontaneous and actually the result of eye and hand coordination. The mind was asked to shut up and it was the intuition at work. We were asked to focus on what we felt when attempting the exercise. I felt one with children I teach. Suddenly I experienced their simplicity, their freedom, their intuition and their uninhibited bold strokes.

About a decade ago, I had attended a workshop on drawing and sketching with Mark Warner, someone who is considered the best in teaching the same, and I remember how he had asked us to attempt similar exercises then. I had loved the exercises even then, but I wasn’t awed by my own results.

I probably laughed at them and never saw what they were intended to make me see. Maybe I was not ready to let go of my fears or maybe I didn’t pay much attention to the lines and forms and feelings and just laughed at the crooked result. Maybe I was too caught up in the right and wrong or maybe the time had not come. I did not understand then, what I understood now. The importance of letting go of fear, the importance of attempting that which one is unsure of. The importance of discovering new lines and forms and expressions, the importance of introducing new things like these into your daily practice and then the confidence rubs off on all the different works that one attempts.

From the kids whom I teach and from the last 10 days of work, I learnt a whole new way to deal with my ideas. I learnt a lot about art, drawing, spontaneity, myself and my responses, but most of all I realised that anybody can draw.

If you can see, you can draw. All we need is to lift that pen from our table, take that paper and just draw what we see. Leave the judgement of right and wrong aside. Get into a childlike frame of mind and just draw. Sometimes with left hand, sometimes with right, sometimes without seeing the paper, sometimes to the tune of music and sometimes abandon that pen and just pick whatever you can find, dip in some ink or paints and just draw.

I am thankful to my mentors and my students (my children) for helping me finally see what it takes to draw like a child… Just drop that fear!

©Shubhra
#8  July 30th, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.

Proper Women?

#MyThursdayThing

I am currently listening to an audio book, Broad Strokes, 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That  Order) by Bridget Quinn. Listening? Yes, a few months back my cousin introduced me to Audible by Amazon and I found listening to books a great experience (since I am an extremely slow reader).  However, Audible is not the point of my post today and I digressed. Coming back to the book, it talks about the lives and art of 15 women artist and in the second chapter I came across this sentence, “ … Regardless, in seventeenth-century Holland, needlework was something all proper women, highborn or low, should do well. Something a well-brought-up woman took pride in…” This sentence took me back several years to my childhood, my school, my art journey and I decided to speak  about this meandering,  triggered  by this one sentence in this book by Bridget Quinn.

Some years back, when someone asked me, if I had painted and played with colours as a child? I realised, actually no. I asked my mother, if I had painted, scribbled with crayons as a child. (I am the eldest of three sisters and I had no memory of ever seeing anything that my parents showed me that this was made by me as a child.) My mother confirmed that any such experiences with colour would only have happened back in preschool. She did remember me bringing home a lot of play dough and making things with it. I thought backto my school and wondered if art was ever taught in our school? Only to get the same answer again—no.

I studied in a convent—St. Mary’s Convent, Kanpur—till class tenth. The best years of my life, the best school one could have possibly gone to in a city like Kanpur. I loved my school and I still do. I have the best friends from my school that I am still in touch with. We often (especially since the lockdown started) chat on Zoom with one another and talk fondly of our days back then. Having said this, my school for all its infrastructure, its brilliance, the teachers, the sisters, the playgrounds, did not have an art room or art classes or even art as a subject. We had an SUPW period (socially useful productive work). We had to often make craft with waste material and take it to school but all that had to be done at home… As far as I remember, most SUPW periods were used up for either annual day concert, choir practice or for sports or basketball. As part of a class and as part of houses we had to spruce up the bulletin boards in classes and corridors but usually those were in the form of collages. No art as such. Given this background, when one reached middle school and one was given homework to draw maps, biology diagrams etc, how could one do it? I started to believe, looking at my diagrams that I can never draw, I am not a creative person. Any latent possibility of being an artist got killed by the grades on the biology file, till I discovered my creative side in Pune, while pursuing my MBA.

Coming back to SMC, my school as it was called. It had a fabulous needlework room and a great teacher in Sr. Agnes. When we reached class fourth we started to do some of these ‘homely’ creative activities like knitting a muffler. I still remember I made a dark blue and light blue coloured muffler for my grandfather.  In the years that followed, I made cross stitch landscape that was huge, 24”x30” and which hung in the drawing room of our house till the last day that we were there. I made a gown, and several other things that I don’t remember now… we learnt all the different kinds of stitches—satin stitch, chain stitch, French knot, hemming, piping etc. Our needle work room was huge and very peaceful. There used to be pin-drop silence in that room as Sr. Agnes was a terrorbut in a nice way… she would not see the front of your embroidery, but the back. If you had not knotted your threads and or cut the threads neatly, you would get a whack on your knuckles. Thanks to her, I still remember all my stitches and I can mend my clothes and re-tack my broken buttons. The other day, on our Zoom call, we all remembered Sr. Agnes and how her training had stood the test of time and we still remember our embroidery lessons.

However, the line …needlework was something all proper women, highborn or low, should do well. Something a well-brought-up woman took pride in… by Bridget Quinn, in her book Broad Strokes made me sit up and wonder. Why would a school otherwise so brilliant, looking after the all-round development of the girls (sports, debates, singing, theatre, LTS etc) not include art in their curriculum and rather have needle work as compulsory subject till class eighth or ninth?The answer probably lies in the statement above. The school was probably in consultation with and maybe based on the demands of the society was preparing young girls to be “Proper Women”. Needlework definitely qualified as a requisite for being a proper woman, not sure about art. 

I remember an incident when Sr. Christina our English teacher in one of the senior classes, scolded all of us in the assembly because the notes of the national anthem were wrongly sung by a few. She punished all of us and in her anger said, “I know why you girls come to this school, not to study or learn music or life skills, but just to get a certificate of a convent educated English speaking girl.” We all just giggled at that time, but later when I grew up and my parents also stepped in the marriage market to find a suitable groom for their daughter, I often heard this statement, from them, or relatives or in matrimonial ads  etc…  “convent educated English speaking girl”, and then I would always remember Sr. Christina and how right she was.

I found my calling by accident. I was 22 years old and pursuing my MBA course, in Pune, when I made my first painting, sitting on the Chatturshingi Hill, inspired by the dramatic sunset. I never looked back. In 2016, I went to Kanpur, 13 years after we had shifted lock, stock and barrel from the city and I visited my school. It was still the same, bulletin boards in corridors, the quiet and peaceful needlework room, huge music room with many pianos. Sr. Agnes was no more and many teachers had retired; some had even passed over to another world. I met Sr. Divya, the then Principal, and gifted her a painting for the school. I am not sure if I am the only professional artist from the school but I was definitely the only one who had gifted a painting to the school as per Sr.Divya.

The school still did not have an art room or art as part of syllabus… However as I happen to glance at one timetable on a bulletin board I realised SUPW and needle work still remain…

©Shubhra
#3  June 11, 2020

#MyThursdayThing will be published every Thursday, on my blog https://shubhrathoughts.blogspot.com/  and shared on my social media handles.