Alive to Paint!

The conundrum of how to teach art

I recently found a book - Alive to Paint, by the artist Francis Hoyland. I was intrigued. I have taught with Francis at The Royal Drawing School and wondered what it was about. I soon realized it discussed the complexity of teaching art – something that I have been engaged with and absorbed by for years. It is not at all straight forward!

To teach anything is a challenge. How do you convey something clearly to another so that they can go away and do it themselves?

Plato described the process: ‘after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself’ (Plato’s Seventh Letter).

Watching Francis teach is to watch this process: the deft and astute way he would ask a student exactly the right question of their work, gently directing them to the problem that they needed to solve; the way he would sit and draw alongside someone struggling, talking them through his process and describing his decision making. In return for his personal response to each individual, he enjoyed the absolute devotion of his students, who would come to his classes again and again to hear his wisdom. I read on. He was bound to have something interesting to say.

To teach art, and specifically drawing, is a conundrum. It is not like teaching most subjects. There are no established rules and methods – or at least not any more.

As Picasso remarked, ‘ as soon as art had lost all link with tradition, and the kind of liberation that came in with Impressionism permitted every painter to do what he wanted to do, then there was no more Painting, there were only individuals… Beginning with Van Gogh, however great we may be, we are all, in a measure, self-taught – you might say, primitive painters. Each one of us must re create an entire language from A-Z’

Francis describes how he used to read this passage to his students, to explain to them why he couldn’t teach them a set of rules or methods, all he could do was open their eyes to the problems of seeing and drawing that generations of artists have grappled with, and set them on their way to trying to find solutions for themselves.

 ‘Alive to Paint’ arose from an article he had read in The Listener by a scientist. ‘He was talking about the way scientists present papers in which they set out their discoveries. The scientist’s conclusion was that if only scientists would set out clearly the steps by which they reached a certain fact or opinion, that fact or opinion would be easier to understand. Could be understood more clearly.’

How much more this must be true of painting. So Francis’ book is autobiographical, an account of the steps and experiences that led him to develop his own personal language ‘from A-Z’. An account of his childhood, his inspirational art teacher, Maurice Field, who inspired so many, his experiences of war, faith, love and loss, of art school, friendships, paintings and travel, of teaching and painting, protesting and believing. By describing his own life and formation as an artist he tries to explain the development and constant evolution of his own visual language, and so points each of us to consider our own stories.

After reading Alive to Paint I have inevitably been pondering my own artistic development (another blog!) but also whether it is true that the task of a teacher of art is to pose the perennial problems of an artist and direct the student to find their own solutions.

I think I think it is. But, along with posing the problems, you can also introduce them to some of the tools used by other artists to solve them. Not to suggest that these are the only tools, or that they might not find their own as they develop their own personal language, but as a starting point. Really this is only a combination of posing the questions and encouraging students to investigate how generations of artists have found their own varied solutions

So, when (many) students come to Long House Studios and tell me that they feel they ‘can’t draw’ – even those that do quite a lot of art, my response is always to just get them drawing. To start by helping them to lose the anxiety around making a ‘good’ drawing and instead to become engrossed in all the possibilities of drawing.

Every course is underpinned by looking at and analysing the work of great artists, so that students can start to see the myriad solutions to the problems posed by making visual art. This, alongside lots of ‘doing’ - experimenting with making marks on a page, learning to see and then express texture, light, space and form, exploring and playing with colour and pattern, rhythm and balance, boldness and delicacy, students start to develop their own language of drawing.  

So, yes, I agree with Francis, that to teach art is to open the eyes of your students to the problems of seeing and drawing that generations of artists have grappled with, whilst also introducing them to some of the tools and techniques that may be useful to them as they start to find their own solutions!

LS

Alive to Paint Francis Hoyland, 1967 OUP

 Life with Picasso Francois Gilot and Carlton Lake 1965