I’ve almost forgotten I have a home, because I’ve been bunkered down at the Atelier which I pretty much never want to leave. You may recall I’m taking a three-month intensive, having thrown in all steady employment in favour of a full-blown art frenzy, and I’m happy to report that it’s everything I hoped and dreamed.
My glorious new routine involves getting up at the same time every day (what luxury!), and this time is not remotely near 5am, taking some brain food such as Bammes or Scott’s ‘book’ to a pleasant, sunny café, and cruising down to the studio by 9.30 to work intently until late afternoon (tea breaks allowed).
Scott’s book
I then potter around a while, working on some illustration and such before the evening class, and head home after about twelve hours of making art. Some days there are models, some days there are casts, some days there are cylinder horses. I’ve investigated the properties of cylinders, discovered three-point perspective, faceted David’s eye, explored turning points through colour, carved masses out of charcoal smudges and rendered some velvety legs. It’s extremely satisfying to work hard all day and to feel like all the knowledge one has gained barely scratches the surface. A lifetime of challenge and intellectual stimulation awaits—art is inexhaustible.
So much of what we do is learning to see, and we learn to see by doing. There’s no fixed curriculum, no exams, no term times, no lectures. The teachers attend to us one at a time, demonstrating their own distinct methods and directing us through exercises that correspond to what we already know and what we hope to gain. I don’t note down anything, I only listen and question and try for myself, and listen again and try again. The teachers bring new explanations, new examples, deftly trailing their pencils across my page to unpack things, connect things, describe things. A new language is penetrating my vocabulary as anatomical words drift along assured pencil strokes. Hearing a piece of information doesn’t cement it, but there is always a day when the new knowledge leaps from the page and everything becomes clear.
Tools are always to hand—skulls, flayed figure casts, iPads, books. Books on bones and muscles, books on artists, historical books, philosophy books. Discussion trips from brushstrokes to politics to sugar-free diets. Cake is shared. Those who find scant time for art feel something when they come—they feel compelled to justify their life choices, assure us of their artistic capabilities, make us understand how big they are in the outside world. But at the atelier, life is art. Nothing else is as pure or simple or profound, and those who seek refuge elsewhere are but making weak excuses for themselves.
Also, we are having a summer show. It’s soon! It’s in Paddington, Brisbane! If you want to hear us wax lyrical about art and see a bunch of drawings of Nicolo (and some other things), you should drop by the RQAS gallery on Petrie Terrace on Saturday 8 December. I’m going to be showing Rufus (‘a painting worthy of its name’—‘well I’d best name it, then’):
Rufus © Samantha Groenestyn
‘This willingness to continually revise one’s own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself to other minds (teachers) in order to increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of sky.’ (Scarry*, p. 7).
Time to go make some more art. x
*Scarry, Elaine, 1999. On beauty and being just. Princeton University Press: New Jersey.