Embodied Drawing

Course Dates: 5^th- 6^th December  2024 (Thursday - Friday)

Embodied Drawing - An experimental 2 day drawing course embracing the physicality of drawing on a large scale - using your own body, gesture and sensation as your subject. Using the generous space of the Seawhite studio there is almost no limit as to how large you can go.

This course is for anyone wishing to expand their drawing practice and find new limits, beyond the scale of your average drawing, by working large, freely, involving body and breath. You will be your own model, working on 2 or 3 large sale drawings, guided by Katie’s exercises and meditation. She will encourage you to experiment, layer, develop and change the drawings over the course of 2 days.

Imagine shutting your eyes, and drawing yourself from the inside out. What does it feel like to be standing here, like this, breathing, still, steady; and now, on one leg, wobbling, stretching out to the top of the page, then crouching, curled into a tight ball, charcoal crunching underfoot? Working intuitively, drawing can be like a dance; full of movement, breath, weight, balance, repetition, grace, or imbalance and clumsiness.

By connecting the process of drawing to our own physicality, we can harness directly the power and sensations of the body to create marks; to fill space, to rub out, to scratch the surface, make our mark, to press into, walk through, push, pull, fight, or dance with, find harmony or discord, create movement or find stillness.

On day 2 you might cut up the large drawings, rub out, paint over, start again with collage, using the fragments to make smaller work. The outcome is perhaps not as important as the process. However, the results may surprise and inspire you in your approach to drawing and painting beyond the course, helping you to discover a fresh way of working from the figure, reinventing your visual response to the physical body.

Artists you can refer to include: Rebecca Horn, Lee Krasner, De Kooning, Jenny Saville, Matisse and Alice Kettle. Squeak Carnwarth, Vivien Suter, Rebecca Salter, Emily Ball, Eva Hesse, Gary Wragg, Cy Twombly, Rachel Whiteread, Jessica Stockholder, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frakenthaler, Sara Schneckcloth and Julia Mehretu.

See Course Details for further information