The need to draw

 Flowers in a copper kettle

8 1/2 x 11 inches

Pen and ink and coloured pencil on

watercolour paper

© Barbara Muir (date unknown)

(Another drawing from my very early

drawing for an income days)

I listened to an interview the other day on Q with Jian
Ghomeshi  with the artist, writer, and wonderful speaker,
Lynda Barry.  She said that all of us have a biological
need to draw, and that we all actually do draw all the
time.  She said that the relaxation we get from doing
something artful is essential to our physiological being.
I don't want Jian Ghomeshi, or the Q people to get
swelled heads, but I was so excited driving my car
to school that day, it's a wonder that I stayed on the road,
and that actually all was and is well.

The part I liked was not only do we all need to
draw, but that we all do, that everybody draws whether
they realize it, or not.  The doodling people
do in meetings, or on the phone is all part of this
desire to create expressing itself.  Wow.  You know
I think we're not alone in that.  You may think I'm
crazy, but I probably won't worry about it.
This summer the sparrow's nest in our eaves
fell down after the babies flew off.  It may well have
been the marauding blue jays that did it, but the
nest stayed on the path beside our house for a few
days, and I wish I'd photographed it.  That nest was
like the most interesting sculptural and textile
art.  It was lined in multiple colours of string, thread,
bits of cloth, paper towels, and the coloured feathers
people use for costumes.  Yep. Dyed feathers.

So maybe not only do all of us draw, but maybe all
creatures create.  A giant leap I know, but one I'm
willing to posit as I had to unplug the keyboard in my
son's room because our cat Fiona had learned how to
turn it on, and was making it play its automatic
symphonies, while adding a few notes of her own by
walking across the keys.

Have an enjoying-your-need-to-draw day.