Leonard McComb, ‘Self Portrait’ 2002

“Drawing is a searching selection to discover the unique shape and internal energies of nature’s living forms in space. In this respect everything I draw is a portrait be it a snowdrop or a mountain.”

– Leonard McComb RA Hon RP

I was taught drawing by Len McComb when I was a student at Goldsmiths.

Len had a quiet manner in the life room. He would often find a moment to make a drawing himself, usually in his sketchbook. Most of the time, however, he would pass from student to student. He would ask me, the student, to stand up and then he’d sit down in my place. He borrowed my view and then began to draw on one side of my drawing. His teaching was not really explanatory, it was exemplary. What he shared could only effectively be shared through drawing. He gave me what he saw, truthfully. It was an honest, respectful dialogue. I was trying to draw something then Len showed me how he might draw it.

His drawings were always different to mine, significantly different. I wouldn’t necessarily or immediately know why.  Sometimes he would ask me to walk around the model before resuming my drawing. He might point out, for instance, that what appeared to be a simple vertical line from in front, was in fact a steep incline into a deeper place, travelling up and away from the draftsman. I’d sit down again and look at the model and at Len’s drawing and I’d begin to see what he saw.

When he was drawing he was not compressing a four dimensional experience into a two dimensional account. His drawings are not ledgers. He was aware of the air around the model and his drawings have that. He had a sense of what was beyond the model and somehow his drawings take your eye into that space. His drawings are not snapshots; they emerge slowly. They require time to read just as they depended on time in the making. That time is intrinsic to Len’s drawing. To the casual look it might seem that his drawings are not always ‘accurate’. Perhaps. I think rather that they are true and that’s not at all the same. Len let me into the time and the space around me.

Occasionally, I would watch him draw and experience a kind of epiphany. “Of course, it’s so obvious!” That wasn’t a daily occurrence, but it did happen. Mostly, I think Len taught me the benefits of affording to the drawing what the drawing required. He taught me that it is possible to see more and that there is always more to see.

Duchamp famously made pejorative asides about ‘retinal’ art. He wanted “to put art back in the service of the mind.” Len engaged my eye and my mind. I don’t think he would have recognised the dichotomy.

In the early eighties novelties were being fomented at Goldsmiths. Tutors like Michael Craig-Martin were nurturing the students who would burst onto the scene as YBAs and Len McComb was definitely ‘other’. But Len’s roots are deep. He used to say that Cézanne was on his side. Cézanne, who shared Len’s fascination with presence, would have known what Len McComb was about.

Leanard McComb, ‘Delia’ 1993, ‘Doris Lessing’ 1999, ‘Louise Arnold’ 1991 & ‘Young Woman holding a Duck’ 1993

 

When?
NOW – 3rd August

Where?
Oriel Mon

Leanard McComb, ‘Phillippa Cooper’, 2002