Pip Woolf

So it is fun, perhaps even ‘naughty’ to draw on a window. But if your mind has forgotten what naughty means and has instead given room for curiosity what can the drawing express?

emotion

personality

intellect

imagination

curiosity and often something unique in each of us, a language of mark.

Making a piece of work loosely titled “Days of my life”.

A durational experience as, to date there are over 22,000 of them. Each day made from a fragile piece of paper, coated with casein and coloured with inks that will fade but all stitched together into a surprisingly weighty piece. Perhaps it might weigh as much as me when finished!

The process invites reflection, stimulates memory to re-enact a time, feeling, event, thought or learning and informs the making. All a bit cloudy with age passed but somehow excited by the act in the present.

I watch my hands, consider the cuts, revel in the peeling away of the paper from its protective backing and consider what stitching is while wondering where the colour comes from and which it will be.

It was a piece begun only in thought but which in the making has taken on a life of its own.

Photographs, scans and computer generated images have to have a source in the physical world.

Paint, graphite and ink drawings made at the brain bank. A way to explore.

Sadly I do not have an image of the two hour painting created this afternoon by a resident at Mountains Care Home. But what was affirming was the way in which this resident who, at the start of the afternoon had trouble getting out of his chair, stood and painted for two hours delighting in the interaction of colour and the addition of the marks of others eventually making the whole surface ( 1.5x 1.8 metres) work as a coherent piece.

Some drew alongside but ultimately the whole image belonged to this one resident, colours vibrating, textures deepening the picture plane to create  a joyous composition. Probably  most exciting was the total concentration and sheer physicality with which the colour was applied.

drawing on walls

painting with pure colour

extending  brushes with long sticks

allowing a complete mark its place

being human

Listening  to a story of a visit to a travel agent to make arrangements to go to visit children in Canada and how it turned into a ( less expensive) Caribbean cruise, I was struck how learning to live with dementia can offer playful delights. Alongside all the frustration and sadness this seems something important to hang onto.

So putting an arm around another and sharing a single drawing implement allows an exchange of energy, a glimpse of what someone else is seeing.

Today we drew on a window together, exploring the world beyond, seeing things through two pairs of eyes drawing with two hands but one tool a chain link fence can become a thing of fascination.

How much of the world passes us by?