VERTIGO

We’ve been coming down to Pembrokeshire for the past thirty years.  Every year as we walk the coastal path, look into deep chasms of old red sandstone , watch white foam creeping up a pebbly shore or waves blasting off cliffs, I’ve said, ‘I’d love to paint that.’  Well this week I did something about it and enrolled on a course with Indigo Brown Creative Holidays.

       The last time I’d done any painting on paper was at school 50 years ago and that had ended badly. My art teacher was a neurotic elderly nun, Sister Bridget, a traditionalist, who discouraged creativity and freedom of expression. I wasn’t interested in drawing static objects. I preferred Lichtenstein to Leonardo then, and consequently failed O level dismally.

        Twenty years on I did mural painting, kind of painting by numbers-filling in blocks of colour in the design drawn up by my husband. We called ourselves, ‘The Gwaelod-y-Garth Mural Workshop’ and together with some of the young people in the area did several community arts projects.  It was fun, and I loved the times when I was on my own, painting large areas with just the river and birds for company. 

         Thirty further years of admiring other people’s art work and the desire to paint wouldn’t go away.  I saw a course, ’Art for the Terrified’ and thought, ‘Perfect.’   The tutor threw Horse Chestnut conkers and autumn leaves onto the table and invited us to draw them. Panic and terror!  It was the longest two hours of my life.  Even less psychologically minded than Sister Bridget, she invited us to walk around the table and contemplate the work of the other twenty students. It was obvious many were not beginners and if they had been terrified it didn’t show in their accomplished lively sketches. My conker resembled a sputnik, my leaf a rocket.  I felt the exposure and shame I imagined Eve might have felt after God had evicted her from the Garden of Eden.  

       ‘Have you thought about having lessons on a one to one basis? ’Judy Linell, a visiting tutor at Indigo Brown asked me, as my emotions took me by surprise  and a pudding- size pebble stuck in my oesophagus.   I felt near to crying and I’m not usually prone to blubber.  We strode side by side up to the top of Garn Fawr.  She’d only asked us to do a sketch. Why was it such a big deal for me? I’d admitted the previous evening to being a complete beginner and having been on a disastrous course for the so-called ‘terrified.’ I soon discovered I was the only beginner. Meaning well and intending to help, Judy and Maggie, both inspiring and accomplished artists, would say,’ Now where’s my terrifed lady?’ I began to feel that I stood out like a Limpet wimp. I mean let’s get a sense of proportion here. I wasn’t being asked to climb Everest or put my life at risk. I was only asked to put some marks on a piece of paper.

      ‘I don’t want to draw a house,’ I said stroppily, when Maggie suggested I start with something easy. ‘I’ve come to paint the sea.’ I imagined the tutors laughing at me with the other students. ‘What does she think is going to happen? Fall off her sketch book?’  The wind raged and nearly blew me off the trig point as I clambered up and turned full circle to see the stunning views of Strumble Head, the wild Atlantic, headlands dissolving in silver mist, freshly furrrowed fields of monotone, and John Piper’s cottage tucked up cosily under the lichened limestone.

        ‘Are you the lady who doesn’t know anything?’ one of the other students asked me when we returned to Maggie’s artistic home, and sat drinking coffee. I nodded. I guess that probably summed me up. ‘I felt like that up there,’ she said, and later as we played with watercolour, she said, ‘I just want to run away.’      Me,too.

        I did go back the next day and so did she. She produced some lovely little paintings. Judy and Maggie did their very best to encourage me. I loved watching Judy perform her magic in demonstrations, and playing with the paint myself and getting some interesting effects .Getting a composition I was happy with defeated me-on this occasion. There was some beautiful work produced by other students. At the end I was the only student not to put their work up for critique. I couldn’t go that far. However, I did feel a door has been opened for me. The next time I fall into a navy blob of watercolour or off the edge of a piece of cartridge paper, I’m sure my fall won’t be so terrifying and my landing will be much softer.