The life-enhancing gift of life drawing | Letter
Jonathan Jones, as well as rejoicing in David Hockney’s undoubtable drawing ability from life in all its aspects, also mentions that there are nearly 500 life drawing classes available across the UK via the Eventbrite website (No one can draw from life like David Hockney – but more than ever are trying, 28 October).
Jones also quotes Tracy Emin, who leads regular classes in Margate, on how life drawing is being enjoyed as a therapeutic and mindful way to slow down and sense your being: “you enjoy looking, you enjoy seeing … after that drawing class, you see everything differently”.
As an ex-comprehensive school art teacher, one of the great privileges I had was to enable students to have this kind of experience while engaging with drawing almost anything in any material: paint, pastel, collage, clay etc, within the curriculum.
Unfortunately, for at least 10 years, the arts and their unique ability to enable young people to slow down and sense their being have been gradually removed from English state schools because of the baccalaureate introduced by this Tory government.
Given the right stimuli, most of the students I taught could draw amazingly well. I look forward to the time when the arts return to the centre of the curriculum in our local schools and we don’t have to just turn to expensive evening classes to enjoy drawing.
Carolynn Cooke
Edinburgh
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