I have always been told I was ‘good’ at drawing. And I have often found the pressure of maintaining that opinion suffocating. I often feel like an imposter. Outside opinions of my work has felt like assertions of dominance over its ownership. I have been governed by whether I get validation from others, whether I’m ‘good enough’ to get commissioned, ‘good enough’ to go to art school. The judgement can diminish the joy. And inevitably self-criticism can be the most cutting.
But what does being ‘good enough’ actually mean? It’s such painfully simplified rhetoric. A statement wherein the goal posts can be constantly moved. I often come back to a tutorial during my MA, in which I told the tutor that I hated a drawing I had done. He said ‘Well, that’s just bad analysis’.
The ongoing challenge is to keep questioning where the fear comes from. What are the ramifications of not being ‘good enough’, and what it is I really want out of making work?
After school I left drawing behind, for a long time. It wasn’t until my mid 20s that I began to attend some evening classes, which led to thinking about doing an Art Foundation. I used to (and sometimes still do) feel inadequate because I didn’t follow a natural trajectory from drawing non-stop since childhood to revered art school and on to a career in the arts. A ‘calling’, if you will.
I was rejected even an interview for one Art Foundation course and told by another interviewer that it was obvious I could draw, but that could be a hindrance, could make you lazy and reliant on your skill, leading to stale and uninteresting work. I felt like I was stuck in a sort of mid-way mediocrity of not being conceptual enough and not being technically talented enough. And at 27, I felt too old to do a course meant for trendy and talented 18 year olds on the cusp of art school.
But there is no time limit on creating, no rule that says you can’t start anytime before you die. On my foundation course at City Lit, my fellow course mates ranged in age from 18 to 70-something. The course offered diversity in creation too, I found it freeing to explore mediums that were not beholden to the pressure of drawing. It allowed me to expand, and through moving away from drawing it became obvious that was what I really wanted to do.
Then my Mum died. A talented and prolific artist herself, and my constant unwavering source of love and support. In amongst the fragments of my abstract reality, a surreal aftermath of grief, shock and loss, I made the decision to go back and finish the foundation. I focussed my final project on my grief-driven inertia.
My loss offered a stark perspective, it clarified the fragility of life, the insignificance of existence. Drawing gave me a vessel into which I could pour the insurmountable energy of my grief. I took a terrifying chance and was accepted onto a Masters course in Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts.
One of the positives of going into art education when you are older, is that you have more confidence to stick to your guns, and fight for your work. Some tutors ‘got’ me, others didn’t. Good teaching experiences can be absolutely revolutionary, whilst bad ones can be devastating. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given is that it’s worth looking at an art teacher’s personal work (if they make it), because if its nothing like the work you want to make or even like, if it doesn’t resonate with you, then it will go a long way in explaining why they seem like they don’t like what you’re doing, or why they are pushing you towards a particular aesthetic.
Art education at any level can be so positive, it offers direction, a sense of community, and a message to yourself that your art is worth giving time and energy to. But you are allowed to disagree with your teachers.
I was lucky enough to be taught by the inimitable Janet Woolley. She has a skill in noticing and directing the different strengths in an individual. Sage advice, always delivered with a side of her unique abstract imagination.
Jan advised us that competitions are a great way of getting your work out there and practising working to a brief. And you never know where it might lead. Whilst on the MA I entered the House of Illustration and Folio Society’s Book Illustration competition and was long-listed. I see this as a turning point in my practise, not just in terms of putting myself out into the big scary world and it paying off, but also in leading me towards a ‘style’ that excited me, and that I have continued to develop. A follow up email when I graduated was replied to two years later with a dream offer of a commission from the Folio Society.
I met a group of wonderful like-minded friends on my MA, and we formed Draw The Line. collective after we graduated. I have benefited infinitely from the positive impact of surrounding myself with others who are making and creating, engaging, sharing, being generous with my vulnerability and in holding other’s. I am learning the power of connecting with and uplifting other artists rather than comparing myself (unfavourably) to them.
I have often felt that ‘real’ artists obsessively work, enter hypnotic states of inspired creation, spew forth prolific reams of profound work. I tell myself I should be able to bring forth an idea fully formed, from head to paper, a perfect sketch of a perfectly perceptive idea.
But the truth is, I struggle, I spend periods of time unable to work, and feel angry that I can’t always access this thing that makes me happy. Sometimes I’m crippled by it. But I know that all I need to do is to start drawing. I can always start. Life is fragile, it is fleeting, but living means I have the chance to try again tomorrow.
Life and creating feels like one long conversation with myself, and I can always try again to take the time to listen and ultimately come back to what it is that compels me to draw.
The weight of a line, the capturing of light, of form, the interaction of materials, the simple act of meditative mark-making, that timeless in-between space where I feel held by it, like being deep under the sea. Where it feels like it belongs to me, and no one else. The crystallising formation of ideas. The threads unravelled out of space and time. There is so much more to creating than a finished, judged piece.
