Andrew Marr, Art, and Life...

Andrew Marr is one of our well-known, most characterful television presenters. He is mostly a political analyst, who brings his dry sense of humour to bear to make political items on the news a bit more fun and interesting (so speaks the non-political me). Poor man had a stroke in January, but he is making a good recovery and is back presenting his weekly show. I went to hear him speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, about his new book on art, and why humans do it.

He is a pretty good artist, but art is not his thing-he-is-famous-for, and the pictures he showed us, which appear in his book, were a mixture of brilliant and, fairly ordinary. But he said a few interesting things along the way, one of which was that he draws three or four times a week, and finds it beneficial, because we all need to spend time "praising the world around us." He went on to say that for him, drawing is probably like praying - not being "a religious man," as he put it. He also said that doing art makes you look at things more, and see things better - which I completely agree with. When I started trying to paint clouds, I suddenly looked at clouds in a lot more detail - where are the shadows, where are the edges - can you call them edges? ... how much grey is there, how many different greys... and other colours? (as Vermeer points out to the Girl in the Pearl Earring...)

I have not managed to do any art for over a year. The last thing I painted was a daffodil, in spring 2012. And it wasn't very good.

But Andrew Marr's talk inspired me to get back to it. He is right that doing art is therapeutic. It makes me enjoy the world around me more. It engrosses me in the right side of the brain, the creative side, which is fun, and  gives me a break from thinking about other things. Making art, even if it is not very good art, is satisfying. We have a natural desire to be making things, all of us do. Some of us write, or cook, or sew, or garden, or play music, but it is all a way of making things. The children in my library make new pictures everyday and want me to stick them up - I already have pictures on top of pictures on the notice board! Here are the bird pictures I painted today (with a thank you to Madeleine Floyd whose style I copied to help me get started...)