Picture that!

Everyone, it is said, can draw. Everyone, similarly, can sing and dance and cook. Truisms like this are, ipso facto, true, but are of no comfort when you are drawing, singing, dancing and cooking. Especially if you are attempting all these activities at the same time. And you can’t really ‘do’ any one of them.

Every so often I get a spasm of creativity when I feel that I have to make something. Now I like words and I am totally surrounded by a partner who constantly urges me to write something in the deluded belief that it will bring fame, riches and a villa in Sitges. I have kept him at bay so far by assuring him that my daily writing of a blog is a form of limbering up for the putsch towards the Magnum Opus which will achieve world wide sales on a par with J K Rowling. At least.

But sometimes words are not enough. I yearn towards the visual arts. And, let’s face it, I could cite an impressive list of art galleries through which I have traipsed, being the "ardent snob" “emoting furiously” (Herbert Read ‘The Meaning of Art’?) in front of some of the most iconic paintings in the entire world of white European dead male painters, mostly. I’ve looked at drawings, watercolours, oils, acrylics, gouaches, pastels, prints, etchings, woodcuts, constructions, collages, found objects, Schwitter’s Merz, Pollock’s drips, Rothko’s blocks, Andre’s bricks, Riley’s lines and I know I can’t do it.

I’m well aware that I started by saying the exact opposite of what I’ve just said (some might say that’s a characteristic of my normal conversation) but it does still have meaning. ‘Everyone can draw’ is a statement without distinctions; if it applies to everyone - it applies to no one; it is, in effect, meaningless. When someone talks about drawing, they usually have a fairly clear idea of what sort of final result they expect to achieve. I am well aware that art is a constant disappointment between expectation and realisation, between what you want to put down and what actually appears. But surely there must be an understanding that some end results are so far from being what the intendee wanted that it can, with some degree of justice, be outlined as a situation where the ‘artist’ could be fairly described as not being able to draw. And that’s me. Not being able to draw.

The clinching argument, of ccourse if found in the drawing themselves: take the caligraphic scribble of Picasso's head of Shakespeare or the effortless drawing of the lion by Rembrandt. How do they do it?

This is the perfect opportunity to find a course to do something about it. I have constantly heard that drawing can be taught. People in eighteenth century novels and early nineteenth century novels are often described as sketching or drawing or producing watercolours and they always have ‘drawing masters’. Methinks I should get one. I hope that there are still some left after city council cuts to further education and continuing education!

I have spent vast amounts (£4) on buying coloured and other pencils together with a sketch book. If I produce anything which is worth looking at (or if when photographed looks half way decent; and believe you me photography can compensate for lack of ability!)

Talking of lack of ability, I recently watched the American remake of ‘The Wicker Man’. The overwhelming question at the end of the film was, “Why have they bothered?” There are so many ways in which the remake either misses opportunities or changes elements to no effect. Nicholas Cage wanders his affectedly bemused way through this farrago of half baked directorial ‘ideas’ to make it different from the 1973 British original. It results in a total ludicrous failure, but has left me with a desire to view the original again.

The second film that we hired was ‘Click’ with Adam Sandler as a harassed architect with a magic device (a remote) which can stop, pause and fast forward time with surprisingly funny and yet poignant results. Apart from the use of a modern electronic device the motivation of the film was, to say the least, old fashioned. ‘Click’ is a distillation of all those sloppily sentimental American films which nauseate with their manic affirmation of white middle class family values. Intermittently funny and wholly familiar from scores of identikit films.

Far more stylish and satisfying was the fortuitous glimpse of the second half of a Robert Taylor and Lana Turner film noir called Johnny Eager (1942) directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The outstanding personality in the film was Van Heflin with his presentation of the drunken, articulate and sardonic buddy to the villain. Yes this film was stilted and wooden to modern eyes, but the quality of the acting had a harmony and completeness which was deeply satisfying. Compared with the two previous films, ‘Johnny Eager’ was head and shoulders better than both of them. Together!

At least my failed drawings will have integrity that ‘Click’ and ‘The Wicker Man’ both lack!

Ho! Ho! Ho!