From The Drawing Room

I'm taking a drawing class this summer and I'm very excited about it. I took art in college and high school and while I was ok at it, it wasn't an area where I excelled. Once again, though, I have the need to express with my hands so I'm giving it another try.

My teacher, Paul, spent half of his education and career in the biological science field and is now a full-time working artist and teacher. If he emphasized anything in this first class, it was the misuse of the word, "talent." "People look at someone else's work that they think is better than theirs and say, 'Oh, they must have more talent than I have,'" he said. "That isn't true - they've just drawn more. If you look up "art" in your wishy-washy Webster's dictionary, you'll notice at the end of the definition it says 'see skill.' Art is a skill, not a talent, and anyone can learn it." He shared a story about how he took a semester of "fun" classes in college, and one of them was drawing. While he was taking drawing, his teacher told him that he should consider doing something else. "I don't know if the old goat is still alive - that was forty years ago - but I'll hold my work up to his any day. He was working under the assumption you had to have 'talent' to be a good artist. ...I learned nothing in his class." 

Here's one of Paul's paintings that I really like: http://paulmohr.net/painting_album/pages/paint_april.html

As the students went around the room to introduce themselves, I learned that many of them were painters who wanted to get the foundations of drawing that they missed along the way. One did quilting and other crafts. Another actually had a degree in art, but lost her connection to it when "life took her in other directions." We had an extroverted teacher in our midst, too, who wanted to know everyone's name and introduce us all to each other. It was funny. All the students were women and everyone except me was over forty. If there was one thing we had in common, though, it was that we all wanted to see. Some used the phrase "gain perspective." 

Paul then told us a story about one of his students whose mother was a professional painter. The student inherited one of her mom's paintings and hung it in her room. She loved looking at it every day - it was the first thing she saw when she woke up and the last thing she saw before she went to sleep. She said that after she took Paul's class, she finally understood how her mother made it and how she made it so beautiful. That insight is what we all wanted. 

I did do some drawing that first day, but it was awful. The class ends in July and I'll post my work then...after it has improved and doesn't embarrass me so much.