Erasing my visual language

She had no right

She might as well have picked up a rubber and rubbed out my entire drawing because, in that moment, it was over. I had been working really hard at my drawing skills for months as I prepared for my O level in art. My teacher was standing over me when she said ‘I am not sure why you took art as a subject because you can’t draw.’ There it was - the feedback I didn’t need. I withdrew from the O level programme and settled for a CSE in art which was pretty worthless and told the world I wasn’t very good at art.

I was too young to see what I could see some years later. I might not have been able to copy what was in front of me but I had a strong grip on colour, composition and movement on the page. She obviously didn’t see that because accurate drawing was art back then. I was also too young to understand how profoundly that comment would affect me going forward. I was a creative soul so my attention turned to perfoming arts where I did really well before forging a career in teaching and ultimately a senior academic post in performing arts. At 38, I had four small children and my life was over stretched so I decided I needed a change. I wanted to move to a small Scottish island and live a different life. So I went searching……

I saw an advert for an art course at night school run by Winchester school of art. I was made of much tougher stuff by then so I signed up. In my very first class we were learning to draw with a Tjanting which is a wax pen used in Batik. The teacher sat down next to me and said ‘goodness me your drawing is beautiful.’ My creative soul released the widest smile and I settled into my new found love of drawing. I have never looked back. I moved into textile art using my needle as my pencil and, more recently, into mixed media art. I am proud to say I have been a working artist for 20 years. I wonder what my old art teacher would say to that….. I also moved my family to a small Scottish island a year after that very first encounter with a Tjanting.

I teach a great deal in the hope that I might empower others to find their inner artist in the sure believe that we all have it in us. I hear this a lot - ‘I can’t draw.’ I answer ‘Yes you can’ before going on to kindly explain that you get better at drawing quite quickly if you make it a regular practice. More importantly, you fall in love with it more each day you pick up a pencil, pen, Tjanting, needle etc etc.

I draw from the natural world. I gather small treasures and bring them home to draw in a way that makes sense to me. I don’t draw for anyone else. I draw because I need to and I love it. Do you draw? I hope so.