Emily Haworth-Booth

When we're making work in a professional or art school context and become focused on what our drawings look like to others, it can be easy to forget how nourishing the simple act of drawing can be, no matter what the final product is, or whether we even get there. Yet it's true that there is also something immensely satisfying, and even healing, in seeing that we have created something on the page, a complete world that is entirely our own but which also connects us vividly to the world outside ourselves. For both these reasons – the process and the product of drawing – it has remained an essential resource throughout my life, allowing me both to accept and rise to circumstances as they occur. Used together, observational and imaginative drawing allow us to perceive the world as it really is and yet re-create our response to it so that we can flourish. As a teacher I find it immensely satisfying to see students tell their own stories through drawing, and become both the authors and readers of their own lives.