The Vocabulary of Drawing
To linear, left-brained thinkers a blank canvas can be intimidating. But to associative, right-brained thinkers the blank page is inviting, fun and full of possibilities. This sense of child’s play is what we felt when entering the Chace Center of the RISD Museum to see Self-Portrait: An Installation, Pat Steir’s acclaimed wall drawings. I wanted so much to pull out my art pencils and start drawing on the walls!

The gallery walls, textured by hand with tiny swirling lines and a red grid, make up the exhibit’s canvas. Upon this, larger-than-life ears, eyes, noses and lips are drawn in the style of Renaissance and Baroque drawing manuals. With the installation, Steir examines the key role these manuscripts played in teaching a standard vocabulary of how to draw the human figure.

It seems fitting for the RISD Museum to showcase Steir’s work and this tradition of learning to draw given that life drawing is at the heart of RISD’s curriculum. It took Steir, working with her assistant and twelve RISD students, two weeks to create the background texture and then draw the images that were projected onto the walls. Much like the apprentices of earlier centuries, the students immersed themselves in the practices of this contemporary artist and, in doing so, gained insight into Steir’s thinking and creative process.

Although drawing is at the heart of everything Steir does, she is also a painter, printmaker and poet. Having written poetry before learning to paint, Steir considers drawing and writing as one and the same. You can see this blurred identity of language and drawing as you move through her body of work (see the Drawing Out of Line exhibit), supporting the idea that one could learn to draw as easily as one learns to write. The curved line that one makes when writing the letter “s,” for example, can be interpreted as a line in an artist’s drawing.

As we left the museum we started sharing stories of how we learned to draw and why drawing remains a passion in our lives. From my Saturday morning art lessons in Mrs. Holland’s art studio to my friend Linda’s memories of drawing from the vintage book Learn to Draw with Jon Gnagy, the “vocabulary” of the art still lingered. I imagined we weren’t the only ones sharing our connection to the exhibit that afternoon. When an exhibit connects with you in a meaningful way, you want to share that experience with others. And that’s exactly what we did!

Share Your Passion for Drawings With Us
How has drawing touched your life? Share the stories behind your art with Élan’s online community by posting a comment to this blog. Or share your drawings by e-mailing them to us (in JPG format). We’ll showcase your art and stories in a follow-up post.