EC Container 4
Because...
...according to my mother, I have always drawn the people around me into my creative, imaginative world. I am not sure to what extent I invite people in, to what extent I am escaping, but I don’t think that I could teach if I found it anything other than a creative process for me. I do like to perform.
...Madi, our creative au pair, was a role model.
...I see, living with a collie, that life is not easy even for a dog; after bed and board, living is a bitch and a ball.
...At some point in my childhood I chose ‘artist’ as an identity. I can pinpoint an afternoon in primary school when I was given time off ‘work’ to paint a banner for a parent teacher function.
...my father was a teacher. He took me to Summerhill and later to Dornach; the spiritual home of Rudolf Seiner’s Anthroposophical society. I wrote my BA dissertation on the Goetheanum.
...my English teacher, Mr Thompson, who moved on after a year of the two year course, sent me a ‘good luck’ card just before I sat the A’level exam a year later that simply said ‘Ben Nicholson Rules’ I remember feeling truly ashamed at the time that I did not know who Ben Nicholson was. I would like my keen 6th form students to know more than I did, or at the very least to know that they want to know, as I did.
...I felt myself an outsider at school. Perhaps, because of this I have an empathy with outsiders.
... I can watch the students, let them create, enjoy their creativity, enjoy the subversion, as long as it is not directed too directly at me.
...through my own aesthetic sense, I can truly appreciate the creation of art that is truly naive at times, and perhaps for me thus real art, even if it is not so for the child creator. I am appreciating it through my own learned aesthetic, not their evolving one, like a Pablo Picasso to Henri Rousseau or a Ben Nicholson to Alfred Wallis.
...I went to the first ‘outsider’ exhibition as a teenager, I also stared into the eyes of Rembrandt, and I did much of my early teaching in the context of “Saatchiart” or “Saartchism” - if it was an ism.
...I can legitimately introduce my 17 year old’s to the men in monks habits; Eric Gill and Gustav Klimpt, to Egon Schiele and Amedeo Modigliani, and then also to Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Saville, Sarah Lucas Tracy Emin, et al.
...I enjoy the work of Banksy more than that of the Chapman brothers, as do most of my students. To introduce them to the Chapman Brothers would horrify the authorities, who might expect me to introduce them to a mutual misunderstanding of Vincent Van Gogh. I will continue to introduce students to the Chapman brothers when they show me Banksy.
...equally I can introduce my 11 year old’s to Lewis Carroll, Mervyn Peake, Edward Gorey and others of that ilk who have been my heros. I prefer the black tales of the brothers Grimm to the sanitised Disney version, perhaps with the exception of Snow White and Fantasia. I would like my students to be able to make that choice for themselves in an informed way. But I also enjoy ‘You’ve Been Framed”.
...in my life drawing class I can teach both adults and students in an adult environment with adult aesthetic sensibilities.
...for a while I taught art to the two daughters of Richard Long, and on one occasion he said to me - some of us are artists, and some of us teach art, which may sound a bit like ‘those who can, do, those that can’t teach’, but I was not said in that way; Richard clearly appreciated the value of teaching, and I took up teaching because I thought that I would make a good teacher, not because it was a job. Although it is a job, I do not regard it as such. To me teaching is my artistic practice.
...possibly I do have a sense of love for the students that I teach, perhaps not necessarily each and every individual, but collectively. Perhaps this feeling is rather a love of teaching.
...for me teaching is also play, I would be bored otherwise, and soon tire.
would it be possible to add love? not necessarily of individuals, but of the group - perhaps a love of teaching - the feeling anyway - the only thing that really matters in teaching - not the content, but the contact between two people - the inspirational teacher - the pebble in the pool.
greetings card by Gerry Thompson and Ann Ward
EC Container 5