I.6.1 Drawing from the Body

• Michelle Forsyth, OCAD University

Traditional approaches to representing the figure is an outdated component of the current foundational curriculum. When I was at WSU, I eliminated these courses and replaced them with a course called Drawing from the Body. I encouraged my students to apply a body-centric approach to drawing. Because drawing is ultimately a performative activity, and students are learning to train their hand to not only copy what their eyes see, but how their arm feels as they touch the support, etc. They also learn to explore their own endurance. So why are we only considering what students are looking at and how close the drawings are to what they see? And, why are there not discussions of what kinds of biases are involved? What makes a good figure model? What if we encouraged different kinds of questions that encourages all bodies and kinds of movement? What if the model cannot sit still or cannot walk? Additionally, what if the conversation between student and model was encouraged?

Currently, I teach watercolour, which I consider body-responsive. How does it feel to make this mark? Can it be repeated from memory or does one have to see it to repeat it? How is a mark from the top to the bottom of the page different than one that is made in the opposite direction? How far can their body reach? Or how does an artists stamina affect their drawing? What kinds of marks can their bodies possibly make? All of our bodies have limitations in different ways and I feel to encourage students to make drawings or paintings while thinking and feeling their own body.

My contribution to this panel will examine the work of Carolee Schneemann, Francesca Woodman, Lygia Clark, Sylvia Bachli and Angela Ellsworth in relation to my own and how they draw from their bodies.

keywords: body, responsive, disability, ableism, drawing

I.6.2 Intersecting Issues Within Figurative Pedagogy

Natalie Majaba Waldburger, OCAD University

The resurgence of observational figurative practices by IBPOC artists over the past decade is, in part, a creative response to the historical representation of racialized, cisgendered, and normative bodies, while articulating the nuances of lived experience and rewriting exclusionary and racist art histories. Importantly, these re-presentations often respond to the intersecting struggles of equity-seeking groups through the lens of personal narrative, speculative futures, and culturally-informed storytelling, worldmaking, and sustainability. Institutions that, for decades, have dismantled figurative methodologies to teaching figuration, or re-imagined figurative content solely through conceptual approaches, are struggling to reconcile the tradition of figurative practice through this critical lens. The decolonization efforts and EDI initiatives of institutions, which also have an impact on this pedagogy, are often spread thinly across curricula resulting in knowledge gaps in many areas. As a result, practices such as cluster hires and intensive community-building through anti-oppression training are utilized to fill in some of these gaps, necessary for the professional well-being of racialized faculty and to support approaches to figurative content that speak to diverse students and current issues. These initiatives have proven to be limited both as Professional Development practices and to meaningfully address the trauma of colonization.

As part of this roundtable discussion, I would like to consider how institutional policies impact figurative curriculum and teaching while redressing the history of figuration in the academy. Alongside the larger institutional impacts, I would like to consider the breadth of inclusive approaches that faculty might take in the classroom to contextualize observational practices in the context of current issues such as Critical Race Theory, Reconciliation, and decolonization, and the role that figurative practice can play in giving agency to artists in representing themselves.

keywords: figurative, decolonization, policy, drawing, EDI

I.6.3 Feminist figure drawing

• Amy Wong, OCAD University

Figure drawing is a situation of babies and bathwaters. I often find myself asking how the particular emphasis on learning figuration through observation and anatomy can be expanded towards a critical and non-Eurocentric framework?

I have taught many figure drawing and figure painting courses, in academic, non-academic, conventional as well as more conceptual contexts. Most times, this work in some way inherently goes against the instinct culled from my lived experience as a racialized feminist. I am interested in the tension and the seeming contradictions of how one can offer other ways of approaching this practice. In this round table I am interested in collectively discussing strategies and resources that allow for, and make space for other ways of understanding the practice of observational study.

Through a praxis of care and conversation, how can we invite students, instructors and models to engage critically and experimentally in the practice of life drawing without defaulting to Eurocentric and patriarchal tropes?

I would argue that innovations occurring in figure drawing courses exist largely at the individual instructor’s discretion, and radical resource sharing is currently at a “grassroots or one-one-one” level rather than in a structured or institutionalized way.

How can post-secondary education account for critical race theory, intersectional feminism, queer theory, disability justice and other forms of critical thinking act as central tenets by which to understand the practice of figure drawing?

keywords: feminist, figure drawing