The Full Circle of Art Materials

Art materials are really special.

We very much take them for granted.

As someone who makes art, I see the potential of the materials around me and how I can use these things to understand my lived experience. Basically, materials are impartial. They have no opinion about how they prefer to be used, and they only act in the capacity determined by contextual action.

I like that meaning a lot. It’s not that art materials don’t have purpose, they do, it’s a very specific purpose, but without human activity, they just stay in their box… forever.

I use materials a lot. If I’m not making something, I’m cleaning, gathering, or preparing art materials. I get a lot of stuff donated too from people in my community. These are materials that people have bought over time and not used. I get given canvases, paints, chalks, pastels, tools, paint brushes paper etc. Some of these materials are very old and hardly used at all. It’s a shame to just throw them away so I reuse them in the many art clubs I facilitate. If I can’t recycle them for use back into the community, I recycled them the best way I can at my local recycling centre.

Recently I got a donation from a local art club. Sadly, their chairperson had passed away and their family had cleared her studio room. I had been given some of her materials and as I was sorting them out, I was struck by the way the materials had recorded how she had used them. I could see which her favourite colours were, and I could see which type of pencils she liked to draw with. I could see how she tried to work out things when she was drawing in her sketchbook.

 As I was processing the materials, I found a sketchbook with many pages ripped out. We often need a sacrificial sketchbook to take the hit of all our workings out. As I was removing the used paper, I found some portraits that looked familiar to some of the ladies that attend the art club. Then I saw names and I realised she had made sketches one evening of her peers at the club last year. It might have been one of those days when you don’t know what to draw so you just draw what’s around you. I took photos and sent them to the art club because they might have a different meaning to them now. They may not even know they were being observed.

I too was surprised to find she had drawn the location where I used to pass her as say hello as she often walked with her friend early on a morning.

Lotherton Hall Estate.

Either way, the materials had done their faithful job or recording the activity of one human being who was no longer with us.