Can I Go Anywhere (Drawing)

Can I go anywhere I wish in my drawings and have you follow?  I discovered after drawing it that the real question wasn’t whether you would follow but whether I could survive it myself. 

I was chatting to my dad a few weeks back about my art, the drawings in particular and he had some ideas about how I might develop the drawings.  He had some good ideas.  Realistic ideas.  Ideas to add to my own ponderings on possibilities and my list of “ways to earn some money”.

I’m still unsure about the Best Thing To Do – my instinct right now is to keep on keeping on.  Not to have an agenda or deadlines or a plan. 

I fear that changing how I draw – as in the motivation and the “just do” nature of my work – will also change it’s intrinsic value.  I fear pushing it into a certain shape will squash the very thing that makes it appeal to many of you.  Whether that is just fear or whether it is well founded is something I will have to discover another day.

What I do know is the times when I struggle the most to draw are the times when I find myself thinking “what would people like to see?”.  And the times when I draw my best are the times when I am drawing because … it seems the right thing for me to do.

Different people seem to get very different things from my drawings.  As I don’t know what the secret is to creating that … value, I’m not seeing a clear way to change or progress or develop in any significant manner that doesn’t mess with the magic and continues to suit my circumstances.

However – during my chat with my dad it did occur to me that all my drawings are rooted in my reality.  Often I even draw the clothes or match the colours I am, or was wearing at the time of the moment I draw.  I saw myself flying in a drawing and wondered why I never had?

There’s no reason for my drawings to be locked into my reality is there? 

Can I go anywhere I wish in my drawings and have you follow?

[IMAGE] A6. Ink (PITT) and watercolour.

Drawing myself in any kind of moment which doesn’t have roots in my reality (and I include dreams and hopes and fantasy in my “reality”) feels … dishonest. 

It feels I deceive you the viewer and me the drawer.  I don’t really consider these drawings “proper” art or myself a proper artist by doing them.  I don’t see them as beautifully crafted renderings of my world.  But I do consider them honest.  True expressions of myself, my world, my feelings, my challenges, my ponderings, my life.  Just like a journal entry or a photo snapshot with the beauty of capturing the visual along with  emotion, humour and honesty.

I’m not able to take my drawn myself off to outer space for a holiday or to become a stunt woman.  How wonderful it might be to explore all the world of possibilities.  Oh the things I could do! 

It just feels too dangerous to live a fantasy life through my drawn self.  Living this life with all that chronic illness has brought for me is hard enough to accept.  Living vicariously through ink imaginings is to present myself with a reality I cannot afford to live or to hold in my heart minute by minute.  To think of the things I would like to do or see or be – but not be able to fight towards or plan for in any certainity.  It would be torment.  Living joyfully in the now is a challenging enough prospect – without having a distant eye on what could have been but for … ah, never mind.

So my drawn myself looks likely to stay within my world – dealing with the mudane ordinary stuff, the bad and the good.  And for me, at least, that is enough of an escape to make it all worthwhile.