writings

Questioning the Visible: Windsor Great Park as Observation Laboratory

“To draw is to look, examining the structure of appearances.
A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree,
but a tree-being-looked-at.”

John Berger, Berger on Drawing

As artists and teachers of art, it is reasonable to assume that we all derive some considerable enjoyment and even sustenance from exercising our eyes, tuning them with our minds, with our hearts and imaginations, and responding with our hands. Our students also love to exercise their eyes. Young children love to draw, but not perhaps for the same reasons as older children. To see a first grader lost in

a drawing is to see someone who is playing, building, shaping, and exploring. The result is of secondary importance. The artist and critic John Berger has written eloquently about the importance of artists, young and old questioning the visible, and particularly about drawing as discovery, and these two linked ideas are what I would like to explore, here.

A number of things have revealed themselves to me over the past twenty or thirty years as I have been drawing, looking at drawings, and immersing myself in drawing processes. Most are wordless things--things which occur to one during extended moments of the “direct experience” of looking at and responding to the visible-- sensations of the eternal now, things that have to do with the nature of order and chaos, the conundrums of duality, the ever mysterious subject/object relationship, what I know, what I don’t know, what I wish I knew, and what, despite my best efforts, I cannot seem to find

out. Also realizations having to do with patience and/or the lack of it, perceptual limitations, and the challenges of finding a “way into” the drawing process that can balance the analytical and the interpretive - to make sure that the poetry of both image and process remains the primary focus.

I have had the pleasure to have lived, during the past two decades, near what has become, for me and several of my colleagues in the art department, a kind of “laboratory for looking”. Windsor Great Park is comprised of some 5,500 acres of woodland, gardens, ponds, and lakes, along with a complex network of roads, bridle paths and footpaths, one of which, known simply as “The Long Walk”, leads directly to Windsor Castle. This Royal Park was established in the 12th century, but provided extensive hunting grounds even earlier for the Saxon Kings of England. I began drawing in the park in the early 1990’s, obtaining a “royal sketching permit” yearly, from The Crown Estate. My English colleague, Andrew Wykes had grown up in the vicinity and, knowing the park extremely well, began to show me his favorite haunts. At first, we simply took sketchbooks, but soon began carrying a full range of plein air gear, including field easels, painting panels, and oil paints.

In The Deer Park, Looking West, Late August Oil on Paper 8 x13 ins

One of the places we found ourselves returning to time and time again was a certain lovely field which occupies part of the “Deer Park”, where the Queen keeps a large herd of some 600 red deer. Spread out across this field are a series of small copses of young oak trees, carefully planted in constellations, each group discreetly visible at varying distances from the viewer. In this field, we made one of our first discoveries about “looking inquisitively”. I write the following description of process in the present tense, like a recipe, because it will

produce results: By carefully fixing one’s attention on each copse and then gently shifting that attention to the next, and then, with rapid eye movements, taking in each again and again, one begins to experience the sensation of becoming aware of a larger and larger perceptual field, until a moment is reached when there is a distinct sense that one’s spatial consciousness has expanded to be much larger than normal--it is a sensation brought about by conscious probing-- focusing and re-focusing, sharpening, and then broadening one’s visual perception. All sorts of levels of visual logic follow on from this state of clarified vision. It occurred to us that

this is most certainly what was happening to Cézanne out in the field and to Giacometti in his studio. As their eyes took in extended sequences of “sensations” and they attempted to urgently “track” them with pencil or paintbrush, they were traveling deeper and deeper into an investigative process which became, both joyously and frustratingly, more complex and mysterious. And as they traveled further into the “out there”, didn’t they also travel further into the “in here” of their own imaginations and subjectivity? We talk about “objective drawing”. Is it possible? Cézanne was known to have stood quietly looking at a motif for as long as an hour

before actually beginning to draw or paint, and referred to the necessity of utilizing ‘the retinal image’, in working from direct observation. Perhaps this is a level at which we can begin to understand his desire to see things as clearly as possible. Andrew Wykes and I were determined to discover just what this ‘retinal image’ is and how we might explore the benefits of paying attention to it.

We began our first experiments with drawing in graphite in Windsor Great Park and then some time later, moved on to using oil paint. Our role models were many: Constable, Turner, Corot, Courbet, the Barbizon Painters, and particularly Pissarro and Cézanne, who first worked together in the 1870’s, when Cézanne submitted himself to a rigorous course of study with the older Pissarro, already a seasoned plein air painter.

Setting up our field easels each day no more than twenty paces apart, Andrew and I usually worked mostly in silence, but made a point of stopping

Pissarro & Cézanne in the1870s

every half hour or so to examine each other’s work in progress.

Blacknest, Storm Approaching Oil 8x10 ins.

Sometimes a discussion would develop, but often we would simply spend several minutes looking at each other’s work and then return to our own, having attempted to be aware and attentive to the other’s most recent moves. After several hours of this (we fortified ourselves with chocolate bars, apples, oranges and proper English tea, always made by Andrew, poured from a thermos bottle), before the light began to fade, we set up our drawings and/or paintings together, and sat down on the ground a few feet away to look at them and discuss our progress. We later agreed that the frank and open discussions that ensued were some of the most constructive and pivotal of our lives as artists. No stone was left unturned, as we continued our dialogue in the pub, or back in the studio. Here is a list of just some of the ideas and issues we discussed, which later became recommendations for our students:

How to get started properly: don’t pick a motif which is overly complex. A landscape composition functions best when it contains just a few primary elements. You often find that even the simplified image quickly becomes complicated, anyway!

Find your way into the drawing or painting by establishing patterns of light and shadow, of value contrasts. Look for rhythms out there, be aware of geometry, major verticals, horizontals and diagonals. Be aware also of the negative spaces as well as the positive. Figure/ ground relationships are key.

Don’t get caught up with details early on. This is a fatal mistake, which our students constantly make! They want immediately to begin drawing every leaf on a tree! Establish a substructure across the picture plane, a scaffolding on which you can build a dynamic composition.

Loosen up! Your intuition may need to come to the fore, and do battle with your know-it-all intellect which will often want to dominate the proceedings by making you tighter and tighter, and by convincing you that you already know what that tree looks like, so you needn’t spend all that much time looking at it!

Mark-making is extremely important. It is your vehicle for exploration. Keep it lively--send an electrical pulse through your marks as you attempt to “synch” your hand with the movements of your eyes.

Nothing comes easily. Do not expect to go out the first day or the first month, and produce a work of genius. You’ll have to work hard at it. It takes a lot of concentration--a sustained engagement. Theory is one thing, practice is another.

Finally - pay attention above and beyond anything else to what is registered on the retina of your eye--the retinal image. There are no words inscribed there, no intellectual baggage attached to this image. It’s just there, now, in this present moment! Trust it.

Our initial six month experiment resulted in an exhibition entitled Blacknest: Drawings & Paintings from England which traveled to Dartmouth College, Rhode Island School of Design, and two preparatory schools in the U.S. These experiments in looking and responding continue today in Windsor Great Park, The TASIS England Art Studios, and during our summer programs at Les Tapies in The South of France. Needless to say, questioning the visible is an addictive activity. My advice, which I plan to follow momentarily, is to pick up a pencil and get back to it!

Cézanne goes for it! circa 1904

John Smalley is Head of Visual Art at TASIS The American School In England and Co-Director of the Les Tapies Arts & Architecture Program and Art Teacher Workshop in The South of France.
Andrew Wykes teaches painting and drawing at Hamline University in Minnesota in the U.S. All drawings, paintings, and photographs (except the photos of Cézanne and Pissarro), reproduced here are by the author.