Blog Post 8: Why Drawing Matters

Anita Taylor discusses in Why Drawing Matters the importance and vitality that drawing holds in her own practice as a teacher and maker. Taylor tells of how drawing operates as a fast track, haptic way to access one’s internal world through the directness of mark making and touch.

Seeing drawings come to life, the vitality of their making, intention and material utterance, as their makers find language and a framework for drawing practice is so rewarding. Enabling others to share in this process and act, to learn and to find meaning through exploring individual enquiry within this wider community of practice is critical; as is discussing and advocating for the value of drawing as intrinsic to being, expression and communication, and a means by which well-being is enhanced and attention expanded. 1

Drawing is the most direct tool for self portrait, offering us the chance to feel our way around our bodies through mark making and line and to consider how we can describe our outward appearance and also investigate our internal world:

This interrogation through drawing then becomes the evidence of a temporal exchange, securing a glimpse of self, inner understanding and the external signs of appearance. This two-way exchange, an affirmation of presence and remembering of self, is established through an objective dialogue as subject and of subject. It is from this point (of attention and reflection) that I navigate the world. 2

Drawing is also a direct way to track and record the process of the maker across a surface. We can trace the movement of the body, the movement of the hand, the speed and delicacy or roughness of touch, as Taylor says:

It enables communication at speed through the recognition of shared, embodied thought processes. As viewers, we are able to locate the marks that record the trace of a thinking process of the maker, through the acts of looking and seeing. As a residue of thought and action, drawing enables discovery. 3

Taylor goes onto discuss how drawing forms the bedrock of pretty much all art disciplines, it can take many forms, it can be tight, it can be loose, it can be representational, it can be propositional, preparatory, imaginative, impulsive or abstract. The forms it can take are endless. It can be architectural; it can be used in laboratories. It can be made on almost any surface, on walls, in sketchbooks, on fabric, on a body, in the sky, on the floor, on water. The possibilities are endless.

Drawing should not be constrained by notions of what is academically good or bad, it should not be considered an undercard to other ways of making. It is an intrinsic and fundamental form of art making. As Taylor says:

Drawing is for everyone.

Drawing is a curriculum essential.

Drawing really matters.

Advocating for drawing matters too 4

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