Art for Art's Sake

The concentration is palpable. As I enter the room and tiptoe in it's like entering an examination hall. The desks are laid out side by side around the edge of the long, narrow room, backs to the window. No chance of distraction then. There is a hushed atmosphere, an almost holy reverence, and I make my way hurriedly to a quiet corner, anxious to avoid making a disturbance.

Gradually my ears attune themselves to what is going on. It's quiet, but by no means silent. A gentle buzz of soft murmuring fills the air, but the most discernible sound is the rhythmic dipping of brushes in water, tapping them gently on the rim of the container before applying small dabs of paint to the paper stretched across the boards. The class is learning to apply paint in layers, building up the image before them. The subject is a small child, on a beach, carrying a bucket and spade, and the mood is traditional, reminding me of a page torn from a child's colouring book. It's a classic seaside scene, blue and yellow with splashes of red for the bucket. It's a 1950's kind of scene. The more skilful of the artists are managing to convey the summer sunshine, with just the right choice of yellow and the shadows on the ground suggesting the direction in which the light is falling and the heat of the summer sun.

My gaze wanders. Easily distracted, I remember how as a child I always chose the window seat wherever possible. Finding lessons easy, I was able to multi-task successfully and my main focus of attention was usually out of doors, watching the netball game in the playground or soaring with the seagulls and wishing I could be free like them. Today my attention is caught by the wide expanses of sand and the line of white foam breaking across the mouth of the estuary before the Dovey empties out into the waters of Cardigan Bay. All that is lacking today is the child with bucket and spade. It's a school day and the children are imprisoned, like me, behind classroom windows and will have to wait until the weekend to get more hands-on experience of the great outdoors.

But it is an odd experience, this mirroring of art and life. Through the yacht club window I am viewing the mirror image of the multiple images on the artists' drawing boards. Fancy expressionism or abstract art are not encouraged in this class. Everything is carefully monitored; even the precise colour shades are prescribed by the tutor to achieve the greatest synchronisation between the image and its various reproductions. Photo-realism is more the recipe dished up by today's art tutor and it is strange to see how uniform are the representations of such a bunch of diverse artists. Creativity, it seems, points the way to a multiplicity of vision but realism seems to necessitate a certain kind of uniformity and a limited vision. The further one travels down the road of expressive creativity the more the paths diverge into a wide spectrum of infinite variety.

Maybe this underlies in part my impression of having walked into an examination room. Here the goals are clear; the challenge is well-defined and the results will be judged against a pre-ordained checklist of techniques and achievements. Originality, flair, expressionism or abstraction are harder to assess and are apt to side-step achievement targets and fall outside the boxes. As usual, the air outside the classroom seems a little easier to breathe. It always has for me.