Creative Wordshops Newsletter June 2025

Presence, Memory and Imagination

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things (Rilke)

In life drawing classes the artist Degas (1834-1917) taught students to work from memory. There were three floors in the building – on the ground floor first year students sat with the model. Second year students drew on the first floor and third year students on the second. So the model was present in the face of first year students all the time, whereas second and third year students had to trip down the stairs to look at the model, then climb back to continue their drawing. Advanced students had further to climb, holding the new insights of angles, images, proportions, shade, in their picture mind. Then descend to check.