Drawing & its relationship with colour

As I understand it, drawing is no longer a necessary practice at the art schools. Life drawing will, apparently, addle your mind! And drawing from life – it has been said – will block the (supposed) natural creativity of the student. But is this not rather like saying that a balanced diet, containing all the necessary nutrients for health of the body, will instead lead to a wasting away? Then too, it is claimed that the mastery of colour will be vitiated by the study of colour theory (as if all Van Gogh needed to do was pour out his unmediated emotions onto the canvas before him).1 Yet what loss there is in this lack of drawing—what impoverishment in the lack even of so small a drawing as this by Cézanne of Pissarro!

But why should an artist’s development of a colour language – such that it is a significant and recognisable part of their work – require drawing as a foundation? William Feaver gives a convincing answer to this question: "[Patrick] Heron’s bid for freedom from the limitations of landscape and from British constraints have always been betrayed by his lack of drawing. Colour alone is no substitute. In Matisse’s Red Studio the prevailing colour is tailored by the draughtsman. In Patrick Heron’s colour schemes drawing is just a preliminary to be obliterated." The Observer, 21 JULY, 1985 Oliver Jelly is equally convincing: "It is … always difficult to sort out a distinctive colour language at whatever stage of life or skill a man stands, but when such a language does appear it is not an early phenomenon of the owner’s life. He has always perfected a graphic or formal frame for the later effulgence." An Essay on Eyesight, 1963. In Googling Patrick Heron, I came across one the most formless and empty paintings I've ever seen: Hard Reds, Yellows and Blues, 1966 (Framed silkscreen print) Not even the use of the word ‘Hard’ will do anything to rescue this from the vaults of the art gallery (though it’s strangely grown on me—just a little).

But the idea came to me that I could perhaps breathe some life into this, the flatest of paintings. And so I tried some experiments, as (first version):

(Scond version)

I make no claim about these, but I have never before been able to use the bright and strong cadmium reds and yellows in my paintings. Most of my reds and yellows have been the earth/iron oxide colours: red and yellow ochre, Indian and Venetian red. So how I managed these colours – as it seems suddenly – I have no idea. Of one thing I am certain: I will do no more variations of Patrick Heron. Year after year I see so many works by the RAs (at the Summer Exhibition) which are repetitive and dead. Such painters have become static, and gone to seed. So much for colour, but what about the practice of life drawing? As far as I am aware, it is practiced only at the Royal Academy and Chelsea art schools (and by some contemporary artists, including for example Maggie Hambling). Matisse would have been appalled at this downgrading and often complete rejection of drawing.