Conversations From The Field
Part 2
Lately my work has been taking me to places where people gather. As an artist who doesn’t really know how to draw the human figure, I relish the problem of stringing a line along to find the form that a person – a real person in motion – might take in a picture. A few Saturdays ago I set up under a row of fig trees at a park in Rozelle. A local soccer game was in progress and the sight of players in colourful shirts, set against the glorious drabness of one of inner Sydney’s last authentic industrial pockets, was too attractive to pass by. I’d been drawing for half an hour without interruption when I noticed a woman standing closely by. She had emerged from a yellow sports car parked behind me and was trying to see what I was doing without actually approaching or being noticed. Annoyed, I acknowledged her with a nod.
“What are you drawing?” she asked, moving within viewing range of the A4 pad on my lap. I had been working on a loose pencil drawing of players on the field, accented with colour. “Oh” she commented. Her tone was of deflated hope. “Are you a fan of soccer?”
“I’m a fan of drawing,” I replied.
“Is it your hobby?” This was a difficult question to answer. The fact that she asked it, coupled with her reaction on seeing my drawing, made it clear that she was unsure where to place me, and was probably baffled by my work. I was disinclined to defensively announce myself a ‘professional artist’. After all, at the point where the pencil meets the paper I am a perpetual amateur.
“Well, I do exhibit drawings and sell them,” I answered.
From this point the woman’s line of questioning became more purposeful. “Why have you only drawn the orange ones?”
I explained: “When I showed up a game had just finished. The orange team were the only ones left on the field.”
“My husband’s on the white team. Why don’t you draw the white ones?”
I was regretting having acknowledged this person. Then came the bombshell.
“Actually,” she ventured, “Can I grab one of those? For my husband.”
I sat, flabbergasted. What kind of transaction was she proposing with the suggestion that she ‘grab’ one of my drawings? I had mentioned that I sell my work but there was nothing in her enquiry to indicate that she wanted to buy one. ‘Grabbing’ does not imply respectful purchase, except perhaps in the case of fast food and toilet rolls. It seemed that she saw my sketch on 185gsm Arches paper as an item up for grabs, slight enough to be hers merely for the asking.
“Do you think your husband would want one?” I asked, sceptically, hoping that she would see for herself the absurdity of her request.
She considered this. “Probably not. But I might grab one. Look, I’ll be back in a few minutes. You’re just going to be sitting here drawing aren’t you?”
With that, she returned to her car and drove away, leaving me to return to my work in a somewhat rattled state. I don’t know where she went, but half an hour later she was back at the oval, standing ten metres to my right. Had she been to purchase a frame for the drawing, or had it dawned on her that she might need some cash to ‘grab’ the drawing? (This was unlikely as no price had been mentioned). Perhaps she had done some thinking about art, and respectful relations between artist and public, for she didn’t approach me. I left the oval with four drawings in my pad, and at least two of them were good ones.
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As remarkable as the ignorant are the experts. I cite the example of the woman riding a Segway, an upright, two-wheeled platform for the immobile. It was a day on which I felt particularly fragile: I had slept badly, and despite beginning with high hopes for my paintings, they were not proceeding well. When she made her motorised approach and asked if I was a student, I explained, as well as I could, that I was an artist, an exhibiting artist. “Yes, I know about that,” she said, pained. “I had a career in the United States, but I had to give it away because…the pressure was too much.” She told me a bit about her work, and shot some questions at me, which I confess I answered summarily, and without energy. This person wanted something from me, some recognition or camaraderie that I did not have within me on that day. Having wheeled around to view my three small canvases, offering an unwanted critique on the way, she tried to draw me on the relative merits of oil and acrylic paint. “ Well,” she probed, “what do you think?” “I think acrylic used in impasto looks like shit. It looks like plastic, and acrylics work best layered thinly.” The brevity and vehemence of my response took her aback, and after thinking for some time about what I had said, looking with puzzlement at my canvases, she fared me well and trundled away. __________________________
Thankfully, not all conversations in the field are born of misunderstanding. On occasion somebody will surprise me with their easy grasp of what it is I am offering in my drawings and paintings. Such a person approached me once at Pyrmont, where I was painting the silos and disused power station of White Bay. “May I watch for a moment?” he asked. He was a tall, slim English gent of seventy years or more, with crisp, white trousers and shirt and deeply suntanned skin. He was quite silent as I painted until, prompted by some change he had noticed, he inquired: “Are you gilding the lily now?” This man, looking and not talking, had perceived that fatal moment when self-consciousness begins to spoil good work. Perhaps he had prompted the change by being there, but the fact that he had recognised it, that he understood what was taking place before him, allowed me to forgive him, and be thankful that he had stopped on his way.