One thing that bothers me about the way painting is often taught is that it divides what we all see into categories. Paintings on the borderline between realism and abstraction interest me greatly – people that aren’t quite portraits, and records of our surroundings that could be landscapes or something else.
When I started teaching full time, the head of department at the school where I was employed gave me a guided tour of the art rooms. Amongst all the usual paraphernalia of a busy studio I noticed a number of wooden open-fronted boxes which, I was told, were for still life. There were lots of bits and pieces from which little tableaux could be constructed, mostly rather tired bits of pottery. These assemblages would be placed in front of a hapless pupil who would be required to draw it.
Now, don’t get me wrong, drawing is a good thing, a really good thing, but this way of teaching seemed to be a dismal way of going about it. I could see why it might be useful: the shallow depth and the fact that it could be placed out of the way of pesky sunlight to avoid any cast shadows meant it could be a sort of nursery slope. In those pre-health and safety days I sometimes used to take in live chickens as a subject for my drawing classes, and don’t recall using the still-life boxes much.