The Sketchbook 4

On Tuesday afternoon the tutor decided that the students must evaluate one another's work, standard procedure. They exchange sketchbooks. After looking through the sketchbook of the person next to you, you have a brief discussion, pointing out what you like and don't like. The student beside me was young, faintly amused by the procedure, but was also conscientious, and seemed to take the task semi-seriously. We sat perched on stools by the easels clustered end to end.
This is to get us into the habit of looking critically at one another's work, as employed also in the art schools. The theory is that one should learn from one's peers, that art should take place in an environment of peers, commenting, suggesting and intervening. Sometimes, though, the practice seems awkward or artificial, and one says the minimum, to avoid hurting the other or shaking him from his complacency or habits. False praise is no doubt given at times, also. Like everything imposed from outside, even the gentlest and most beneficial, they are sometimes experienced with discomfort or disinterest.
And I hand my sketchbook to the student beside me, an echo of the time I handed it over before. I see it once again, my gesture exactly the same, his receipt exactly the same. And now it seems to be his, for a few minutes, but his nonetheless, to judge and pore over. So, this is a gesture that I must repeat: To hand over that which is mine, which I jealously guard, to a stranger, for in this land everyone is a stranger, even my friend. He is only a provisional friend, till the time he reveals himself as a rival. My sketchbook in the hands of another: What if he misuses it, what if he marks it with rough, careless drawings, or subjects the work to rough, careless misunderstandings? He will see it with another eye, his own, different from mine: Like images seen reversed in a mirror, his eye will distort the drawings while they remain the same, and he will fail to understand them. I feel as though he is prising open an oyster to rudely grasp a pearl which is mine, his fingers settling around it. He will misunderstand.
Now Wednesday and life drawing: I am doing a drawing on a big A2 sheet with pastels. The students stand at their easels drawing. I have before me on my stool an open set of pastel crayons. The boy beside me asks if he can borrow a yellow pastel. I hand it over.
The slightly stunted yellow chalk is in his possession, he receives it with a murmur, preoccupied and careless. I say nothing. He adds highlights to his drawing, carelessly and roughly.
Meanwhile the model sits motionless and graceful against the backdrop of a white sheet.
I gave him the sketchbook and he returned it with drawings which I did not like. I did not like having it in his control, wrested away from me. He took a thing belonging to me, I gave it reluctantly. I give away my sketchbook, my chalk, that which is mine. When they touch my things I feel anxious, but cannot intervene; I am too polite, or I strive to be polite. I would like to snatch my object back, like small children do when they have not learned to be dishonest. Like the child, I do not really care about the object, whatever it may be; I merely want to wrench it from another's grasp because it is mine. This idea of "mine" is a triumph and an end in itself.
And in the end I will give all my possessions away, disperse them like seed: I don't care about them.