I had a professor who mocked the way we all walked from painting to painting like ducklings, following the museum masses rather than choosing for ourselves.
“You should stand in the doorway and let the piece pick you,” Damien would say with a flourish, his white eyebrows rising almost as high as his hands. “Let yourselves be drawn to it.” We usually let him down, the way we dressed alike and thought alike, copying each other’s ideas and colors until that strange day one of us found inspiration elsewhere and emerged on the other side. Damien would drag their easel across the studio – wheels screeching and scratching in defiance – and stick them in some drafty corner away from our prying eyes... |