Ann Webborn is facilitating a final sketch session at the Art Studios and asks the class to copy an image. The details read: “Colorplate 57, The Moroccans. 1916. Canvas. 71-3/8 x 110 inches (181.3 x 279.4 cm). Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Marx.”
The still life contains a jumble of circular shapes. Steve copies them in thirty minutes. The charcoal waltzes under his grip. What’s exciting about the composition is that Steve seems to recognize the language it speaks. The language of art is elemental; it has seven elements—line, shape, space, value, texture, colour and form. Here’s a language that doesn’t confuse. Nor does it distract or sideline him in any way. Ann has referred to each element throughout the ten-week class. I’ve been there as an observer, and today’s exercise is a culmination of these components.
Steve uses a mixture of horizontal, vertical, diagonal and curved lines in a variety of widths. The composition comprises geometric (rectangles, circles, squares) shapes enclosed in lines that define height and width. Around the shapes are unoccupied spaces that give a feeling of depth or gravity in the Moroccan heat of contrasts. Steve’s dark to light values range from charcoal shading to a Conté crayon’s pale reddish hue. The simulated illusion of texture is in the rind of market melons and gourds.
Line, shape, space, value and texture are the five elements expressed in this composition (most artworks encompass at least two elements). Form refers more to sculpture. This is a colourless black-and-white-and-rust image (Steve’s rusty hue is Conté crayon).
The original work is a market scene from a casbah in North Africa, with green melons and orange gourds in the left foreground. In the left background, a balcony, a mosque and a bouquet of flowers on the parapet counterbalance the foreground’s circular shapes. The standing figure is an abstracted worshipper. On the right, a turban is wound round his dome-like head. Visible from behind, another figure is bent in prayer. Three alleyways of black shading distinguish the starkly lit shapes from one another. None of this rationale is known to Steve. I only learn of it later.
By 1908 the Fauvist or Wild Beasts movement was a step away from Post-Impressionism. When Henri Matisse painted this scene, it was all about light and space. Without colour, its story is camouflaged in a photocopied (black and white) version. Nonetheless, Steve copies it (identifying with its elements). He realigns and compacts its landscape view onto a portrait-shaped paper.
Steve’s passion for art, and his longing to return to it, has been buried in the impoverishment of schizophrenia and the illness’s misrepresentation of reality: in how people, places and things are perceived. Yet he accurately represents multi-dimensions in this short sketch, because he is fluent in an elemental language that was the mother tongue of an artistic youth—elemental to Art—elemental to Steve.
I have practiced drawing exercises in Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain30 on two occasions. The first time I take a course with an instructor. The second time, I’m recovering from hip-replacement surgery, and I redo all the exercises on my own, curious to discover what I missed on the first pass.
The right hemisphere of the brain is the imaginative, intuitive side, as opposed to its analytical neighbour. The two sides collaborate, yet people usually have a dominant side. In artful activities, the reason-seeking left brain can be a distraction. Edwards’s exercises are designed to shut reason up, and out. She says, “In the process of learning to draw, one also learns to control how one’s own brain handles information.”31 She cites George Orwell: “Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations.”32
Each chapter has exercises for the student practitioner: copying portions of a drawing, copying an upside-down drawing, doing step-by-step drawings with the right or left hand (with and without looking), eyeing specific shapes and angles. It is my eye-opener to the world of art. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about Steve; I was just exploring. That’s what he’s doing under Ann’s tutelage.
One of the keys to sketch copying seems to be in not identifying what one is seeing. That allows the right brain to decipher the shapes and colours without the censorship of the left brain. The right brain’s logical twin might ask, “Is that supposed to be a basket of melons?”
But Steve doesn’t ask. He copies what he sees before him; he’s at home in an artistic moment, plying one shape against another, playing all the angles.
Visual art’s rule of thirds demystifies Matisse’s draftsmanship (and is part of what I imagine captivates Steve). The rule divides a surface into nine squares with four intersecting power points that draw the viewer’s eye. It’s a game of tic-tac-toe or X’s and O’s, but this time, it’s not about filling in the squares as game rules dictate. Rather, the four intersections are where objects of interest are placed. The artist’s intention, by virtue of composing angles and shapes (and leaving out extraneous ones), keeps the viewer’s eyes dancing back and forth.
The Matisse work is a dance Steve does not sit out. He’s fully engaged. The background minaret balances the worshippers’ turbans and the melons in a waltz: three in the sense of the rule of thirds. One, two, three—one, two, three—minaret, turbans, melons. It is a picture dancing over power points.
An artist and former English student of mine later tells me she sees this dancing interplay in Steve’s work—a fluency of line, shape, space, value and texture.
Steve Effervescence is a lipogram, or a Greek form of poetry that limits letter usage. Lipograms are word games or puzzles. They leave something out. I leave out all but one vowel, using the letter E, the most common letter in the English alphabet.
Greek lipogram poets left out the letter that they called a sigma or a hissing sound (it resembles an angular E). I’m reminded of stigma’s hiss. I decide to skew it. The letter E has many guises in English: it can be short, as in the word excellent, or long, as in need; it can be silent (as in sometimes) or lazy (as in her) or irregular (as in sphere). My three-part lipogram follows a rule of thirds. Its values draw attention to the powerful points of seeing, perception—and deception.
excellent sketcher—deft welder— needed her sphere, her germ he-be-geezer pretense repelled her presence deepened defense effect elected then ejected debt percent merger. Egress.
There are so many ways of seeing.
In old 1920 Al Capone movie reruns, actors like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson had a nasal slur and a narrow vision: “It’s like this, see? We rob the bank, see? Anyone who crosses me is a double crosser, see?”
There’s seeing as pondering with a stroke of the chin, as in “Let…me…see.”
There’s “We’ll see about that” indignation.
There’s seeing as observing, looking and looking again, with clarity or with obscurity.
There are so many ways of seeing, if you see what I mean.
Steve has had glasses for as long as I can remember. Nearsightedness never minimized his love of reading. He reads everything from newspaper flyers to twenty-five-year-old mechanics’ manuals. He doesn’t recycle them. They amass.
The first time I notice Steve’s vision (and shopping) irregularity is at the Salvation Army thrift store. He’s in the change room to try on a shirt he likes; he likes it, buys it and leaves his old one behind. He then decides to see if he can stretch his luck to eyeglasses. This is how he shops.
“Let’s see if I find the magic lens,” says Steve.
It is a bizarre shopping technique, like a kid at an arcade trying his luck at a claw crane. He leads me to a display case (the most expensive area, by Sally Ann thrift-seeking standards) with a miscellany of eyeglasses, jewellery and watches. The salesgirl is the claw. Steve’s at the controls.
“Those ones,” Steve points.
She swoops in to pick up the glasses he’s pinpointed from a very limited selection. What are the chances he’ll find his prescription? Slim to none, I think.
“Steve, you need your own prescription,” I say.
Silence.
“Steve, why don’t we get you an eye appointment?”
“NO, Joan.”
When I make an eye appointment for myself, I get a glimmer into why he hates the idea of someone peering into his eyes. I’ve been fortunate, just wearing magnifying lenses for reading, but I ask my doctor if I shouldn’t get my eyes checked. She agrees.
Eyes may or may not be windows to the soul, but people with schizophrenia might envision the optometrist mind reading while probing the eyes—possibly scheming to do them harm.
I wait nearly an hour in a sterile waiting room. The doctor, a stranger to me, doesn’t apologize for the delay; he looks annoyed and behind schedule. Near retirement age, he seemingly can’t wait to get “me” over with. Rabbit eyes examine me through periscopic equipment. His detached approach nettles me. Has Steve had appointments like this?
Perhaps this is why Steve buys glasses at thrift stores when he’s feeling lucky. He sometimes wears two or three lenses at a time. He experiments with them. I give him Mum and Dad’s old glasses. I’ve held on to them for sentimental reasons. Steve favours a lens of Mum’s and holds it up to his eye like a monocle. I don’t realize that this is the lucky one.
Ann Webborn recommends Steve come to class alone, a bit like separating mother and child. My own mum, suffering dementia in her eighties, never wanted me to leave her alone at her once-a-week eldercare. Her fear was that the “care team” would forget her in the same way she’d forgotten how she got there. I left her all the same.
On Ann’s recommendation, Steve attends pottery and painting sessions without me. Other Art Studios students discover friendships and a social scene. Steve doesn’t want a social scene. He doesn’t qualify for an open studio to work on his own projects if he can’t work collaboratively.
“Where were you today, Joan?” he says when I pick him up on the way to grocery shopping. He is implying, “You’re not dumping me, are you?”
He says, “Stop signing me up.”
He’s done all the classes that interest him. Time to move on.
He wants Art, for Art’s sake—Betty Edwards’s ideal of art with a capital A. Yet I am so grateful for his reintroduction to art at the Art Studios, and to Ann and his teachers, with whom we stay in touch. Without this reintroduction to Art, Steve wouldn’t have germinated his art. We’re not falling off or away from one program. We’re blooming Steve’s art.
Most art programs have a teacher, yet Steve likes the self-guided approach. Any art session we find has to fit within my work schedule and fulfill Steve’s Art-with-a-capital-A criteria. I look and look, and then I find what is basic.
“Life drawing is a basic inquiry into the human form,”33 said Maurice Spira, whose quote is the mantra of a Vancouver life-drawing society, Basic Inquiry.
Basic Inquiry art studio on Main Street in Vancouver provides the venue and the equipment for drawing: easels, drawing boards, drawing horses and large clips to attach paper to board. Students bring their own drawing supplies.
I arrive early and set up the wooden horse or donkey, so called because you ride it, bareback. It has a little notch on the seat to balance a drawing board, on which I clip practice paper and acid-free paper for the three thirty-minute sketches. I put the kettle on and wait for Steve to roll in.
He brings his own supplies. He favours dollar-store paper. As time goes on, I augment it with higher-quality acid-free paper. We get art kits that look like plastic fishing tackle boxes. They sit at our feet between the drawing board and the back of the donkey. I’m no longer a bystander. In order to attend, I must draw alongside the other members in the circle.
Getting up and down from the donkey is a bit precarious. That’s how his tea mug spills and breaks. The cleanup supplies are behind the bathroom door. Without making a fuss, the first time we drop and break something, I clean up. I mop up quickly. Later on, Steve does the same.
“Where’s my lens?” Steve asks as we are getting into the car after a session.
“What lens?”
“Joan, you swept up the broken bits.”
“That was the mug; I never saw a lens.”
“Go back and find it.”
He is annoyed. I’m not thrilled. The manager and model are wrapping up for the day; the model is collecting her cheque.
“I don’t like going through garbage, Steve.”
“Just find it, Joan. You lost my lucky lens.”
“Hey, are you two siblings?” asks the model.
“Yeah,” I reply.
“Cool. You bicker like siblings.”
She distracts us from the intensity of the moment. I do not find the lucky lens. I do not persuade Steve to get an eye appointment.
Matisse cites Picasso, “Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.”34
This is where Steve wants to go with Art. He’s feeling his way.
secret-seven sped, stretched peppered eggshells. eked endless effect. see them. there. velvet veneer where
hell smelt—leer felt fermented. nevertheless, she met regret. wheedled fettered webs.
Contour detection is one visual abnormality I observe when Steve draws over the edges of two overlapping pieces of paper, or when the charcoal moves from paper to drawing board so that the figure is bisected. Doesn’t he know the charcoal is careening off the edge? Is he so single-minded he doesn’t care? I think the intensity of his focus takes the figure off the page. I don’t realize it’s unconscious.
Steve does full-figure representations as well as portraits or head-and-shoulder views. His likenesses don’t always capture the model’s expression. His faces are classical and remind me of the framed reproductions of Renaissance Madonnas that Mum had on my bedroom walls—sombre with eyes downcast.
Models can’t smile cheerily and hold that expression for a thirty-minute pose. Their faces are neutral. Steve’s faces are neutral, including his own. What comes out on paper is unique in line, form and composition. Steve’s work is powerful, colourful and vital. That he can’t see fine detail doesn’t dawn on me.
Another visual defect is sensitivity to colour, hue and light. Sensitivity to light can cause blurriness, enough to cause light-headedness. It can trigger hallucinations, complete with moving parts. In art, this can be a gift. In life, it can be frightful.
After a session at Basic Inquiry, we’re sitting outdoors at an eatery we’ve been to before. We order sandwiches. Some workmen are seated about twenty paces away, behind Steve. The mid-afternoon sun is behind me. Is the sun in Steve’s eyes? He becomes agitated and looks at me as if I am a demon. An orc sighting. He kicks the chair and shouts something unintelligible. Something has thrown him into the dumpster without Bilbo’s ring for protection. The workmen look concerned, ready to intervene. I keep my voice steady.
“Steve, I’m going home now. See you next week. Please take your medication.” I don’t know what else to say, even though lithium doesn’t prevent psychoses. He is not on antipsychotic meds. Dr. P told me lithium “slows down his engine.” Today, his engine is overheating.
Steve looks relieved but distracted. I am rattled. He walks home, about a mile, or maybe he takes a bus. I never find out. A social worker later tells me that I did the right thing, removing myself from a tenuous situation. This is not the brother I know. This is the illness. I hate this uninvited visitor who has spoiled our day—has spoiled Steve’s life.
Steve has the intervening week, and the years dealing with psychoses, to gather his thoughts. Art is on the line. He doesn’t want to blight this relationship. It is ours, in its fledgling stage.
Steve is also in a stage, known as phase three (ages fifty-five to sixty-four), of schizophrenia where the positive symptoms (psychoses, hallucination and delusion) are in decline. Burnout. That time frame corresponds with our time together. Steve doesn’t want our relationship to dissolve into an orc nightmare. Willing it won’t make hallucinations go away. Perhaps it is that Middle-earthling mid-life that J.R.R. Tolkien referred to that has got the demons on the run. In a way, our time framework is our lucky lens.
I dream of someone familiar to me. (I forget whom, because my conscious brain can’t remember.) I accept that it is she, even though her face is altered. The dream unfolds like a movie, and I take in the situation as it develops. She is my friend. Dream rules allow for that. Steve’s reality allows for face smudging, even facial distortion.
Some nights when I turn off the bedside light, a residual image remains in the pixels behind my eyelids, an image resembling a face, a pleasant face, one that can change to a less pleasant one in milliseconds—from benign to grotesque.
Another night, just as I begin to fall asleep, a nightmare is brewing. It’s as if acid is thrown over a glass image, streaking and bubbling. A tooth dream is coming on, in which I lose all my teeth in one gummy variation after another. They don’t fall out. I pull them out in globs.
Dream analyzers suggest radical changes are in the works for those who have this dream, or that I’m about to let go of something. I recognize the source of this troubling dream. That’s not a privilege Steve has. How does he explain what and how he sees: real-time, daytime nightmares?
As Mum’s advocate when she had some decayed teeth removed, I sat with her at the dentist’s surgery, reassured her, reminded her why she was there and watched the slow injection of needles. “It’s because of her age,” explained the dentist. “The freezing must be injected slowly.” Her teeth were extracted and her gums packed with gauze. When we left the surgery, she couldn’t remember what had happened.
“Mum, you’ve had teeth removed to make room for a nice new set.”
She loved getting new teeth. I dream about all the ways mine might fall out.
teethed sweetness whenever elders wept. slept ere wretchedness leeched bled weeds. fewer fences, lesser pretense. swept seeds wherever. we three: he, me, them. we’ve seen the cleft ebb: the perfect tercet.
Charcoal is a medium that dates back twenty-three thousand years and was used in body painting. Steve holds the rich, dark stump over his sketch paper. This finely ground organic material is his wedge on reality. It is on his hands, on his face, under his nails, in his tea, in his coffee. It is black and smudgy, and he prefers it to felt markers or Sharpies, as a finishing outline. He doesn’t wash his hands afterwards. It marks him, but not like a stigma—it is his craftsman’s badge. He looks like a coal miner, fresh from a shift.
Edges, outlines and details aren’t part of his visual field. He uses charcoal outlines to bookend the work and ground it: black is his charcoal anchor.
Less obvious is how easily charcoal can be lifted or erased, particularly if it isn’t bound by wax or gum. Without a binder, it is free. What a tool to begin self-expression—and what freedom of expression.