Thoughts on drawing and openness-to-all

What if a gallery were not just a place where people come to look at things that other people have made, but also a place where they rediscover their own capacity to make?
A gentle step from absorb-all-the-knowledge towards use-everything-that-you-already-have-but-you-can-borrow-the-tools-and-some-of-these-ideas-but-only-if-you'd-like.

Based on some recent attempts to invite my friends to join me for a drawing session.

1. I believe that drawing is a joy that can be experienced by everyone, we just need to find the way. Sometimes it's less about the infrastructure and more about the framing. You can define its virtues in many directions. For me, it's an exercise in attention, yet, simultaneously, just letting go with the movement of my hand. It definitely can be -- and sometimes, thankfully, is -- a social activity: where a particular result is less important than simply being in a shared space, open for interactions and conversations.

2. Models walk, and it's a special professional requirement for them. Olympic athletes walk (possibly? they obviously do it in some sports... probably). Guards walk, and it takes, again, a special skill and training.

Walking can take many forms:
- It can be a means of getting from one place to another.
- It can be a professional skill.
- It can be an athletic discipline.
- It can be a performance.
- It can be an everyday movement we don't think about much.

3. We don't confuse the existence of highly trained "walkers" (who are being paid for doing so in a particular capacity — within a predefined space for a certain chunk of their lives) with our own ability to walk.
Nobody says "I can't walk" based on the existence of the fashion week.
Nobody feels embarrassed by the fact that they can't reproduce the changing of the guards.

4. Yet when I mention gallery-based drawing sessions — open to everyone, free to attend, all the materials provided — the main reaction that I get is "I can't draw".

People imagine a very particular mode of participation where evaluation is implied. Probably, even a performance — to be put on display, to be "consumed" by others (hate this word). This is what galleries do, don't they? They exhibit.
(I know, I know there's more than that.)

I think it's time to reconsider the place of visual self-expression (and activities related to it) in human existence.

Illustration: just a random sketch I did during the most recent open-to-all drawing session at the NPG based on one of the existing artworks.