IWD Drawing Together 2022
Drawing
8 March was International Women’s Day 2022 and the theme for 2022 was #BreaktheBias. DAD again organised an online Drawing Together session as its way of contributing to making a positive difference for women. The format for the evening was a free-flowing discussion around the theme while drawing. We talked about what bias means (as in textiles and unfair prejudice).
Caroline Fox Betts read Her Kind by Anne Sexton
This led onto a discussion about the percieved threat and incompleteness of the single woman, the visibility of older women, the freedom and enjoyment of being single, not feeling pressured to be attractive or to necessarily share one’s partner’s social life outside the home, the current situation in Ukraine and its impact particularly on women….
- Thank you so much for a very enjoyable evening of drawing and discussion. It was lovely to see everyone and interesting to hear their views on the Breaking the Bias theme, some of which had not occurred to me and gave me a new and different perspective on the issue. To me the theme suggests opposing any form of prejudice or discrimination towards others, not only on grounds of gender but also race, creed, sexuality or any other perceived difference, a view I passionately share. I really enjoyed the drawing together, thank you for inviting me. (Carole Day)
- It was great to be with funny and interesting women. (Katya Robin)
- I feel so empowered by that wonderful meeting; it’s quite surprised me how much I need more women in my life! (Kate Beaugie)
- It was fun! It felt like a positive and unified thing to do. I’m usually shy of joining in with such things, but felt completely relaxed in the company of this emotionally intelligent group. I hope to do something like it again. It’s life affirming. Thank you to all. (Caroline Fox Betts)
- A lovely evening of drawing and conversation. (Steph Wallace)
- thank you, DAD, for another inspiring evening of discussion and drawing! (Edda Salander-Jones)
- Thanks for a warm and friendly group drawing session, my sewn drawing, ‘Displacement’, is a tribute to all the women of Ukraine. (Gwen Hedley)
- My ‘drawing together’ took the form of gathering the wonderful exciting women from far and wide into a screen shot made possible through the wonders of zoom and struggling with the more advanced zoom technology. Sincere apologies to Florence Husen for not having the zoom skills to let her back into the meeting after trying to delete one of her two Florence Husen screens! Also sadly Nienke Ernisse is missing from the group photo which must have been taken when she was having problems with her audio and went in and out a few times! (Joanna Jones)
Text by Anna Falcini
IWD 2022 Drawing Together DAD event
The first drawing was on A4 graph paper, using watercolour. I was painting blocks of colour that were connected with each other as I listened into the conversations. I felt a little apprehensive contributing my thoughts as the group were dynamic and maybe I was trying to find a foothold into things, knowing what to reveal or contribute. Measuring myself. Maybe it’s been a while since I’ve been part of these kinds of discussions. I was rusty.
Vocalising my thoughts doesn’t come naturally to me and the written word seems to be a more comfortable territory for me. As the conversation went into the presence of a single woman or the response to older women a number of evocative words were spoken by the group; suspicious, threatening, dangerous, patronised. I’ve begun to relate to some of those words when I’ve been walking alone in the Hoo Peninsula for my research or when I’ve attended events on my own. As I move into my fifties, I sense my age becoming more of an issue for some in society. It seems life experience roots me but then I sense an invisibility creeping in because I am ageing. I was struck by what Laura, one of the participants said in response to a comment I made about men feeling threatened in the swimming pool if you swim faster and overtake them. If you are accomplished at something but not in a competitive way, then that in itself is a threat.
Drawing 2 was a series of blobs of colour on a small watercolour pad. In my subconscious I wonder if I was thinking of an act of drawing rebellion, a kind of ‘fuck it’ in response to the stories of bias and negativity towards our gender, being spoken about by women in the group. Or maybe I was just moving away from the linearity of the grid. Gwen another participant thought of bias in terms of textiles, the weft and warp. I studied weave at undergraduate level and there was always a perverse enjoyment of a grid whilst wanting to break free from its constraints. I became fascinated by the Fiber Art movement during that period, trying to liberate myself from the constraints of both the fabric, of my gender.
I returned back to the grid for the next drawing. Partly because I didn’t have a knife to cut the watercolour page off the pad. We used the grid paper in my textile degree to work out patterns and how to weave them. This zigzag of repetitive squares in blue fall down the centre of the page. I hadn’t worked out how many exactly in each block, so they are slightly uneven in the format, but I liked that. I saw this drawing as being about division but also an integration of two sides.
Drawing 4 is about my fascination with the blue stripe. It’s been a recurring theme since early research into Gwen John in 2014. These are freehand stripes in blue gouache guided by the grid. I had done a series of drawings about the blue stripe not really knowing why but then I discovered a few years later that Gwen John had painted a still life with a striking blue striped tablecloth.
The session finishes and I can find a knife now to cut off the page of the watercolour pad. On my table are about 20 small round ceramic balls that were found in a field on the Isle of Sheppey. I have not identified them and their history, but they are all uneven and could have been used in weaponry. The island is close to Herne Bay where I live, and it can be seen on the horizon. There is a negativity about the island, a suspicion about its ‘island-ness’, that I hear regularly from the mainland of coastal Kent. I pick up one of these clay balls and roll it around in blue gouache and drop it onto the watercolour pad where it moves across the page.
The ball is unpredictable and maps its own little journey. I keep refreshing the surface of the ball with paint and rolling it around.
I move onto a larger sheet of paper and hold the edges to guide the ball on a longer journey. It’s hard to control and veers wildly towards to the ends of the paper or it puddles in areas or runs quickly out of paint. I continue onto tracing paper where the marks are hard to detect unless I use white paper beneath. The ball moves much faster on it, slips around and finds no traction on it. Maybe I occupy a Medieval witch or diviner of spirits as I try and hold onto the ball. I become completely absorbed in trying to control this unpredictable act. These final drawings seem to come nearer to the conversations about bias against women and the releasing of those tensions by women. We’ve work to do but I like to think we can be moving in our own pathways like the ball.
Bim Malcomson Drawing Solo videos #1#2#3
