Jill Boualaxai

Sketchbooks often carry a surprising amount of pressure. They are expected to hold ideas, demonstrate productivity, or act as proof that "work" is happening. Over time, that weight can make them feel strangely performative as something to be kept tidy, coherent, or quietly impressive. Haymarket Road Works 2012 In practice, I am more interested in sketchbooks as places where work is allowed to behave badly. They are not spaces where ideas are neatly planned before being executed elsewhere....

Two years into the Look & Draw studio, this reflection looks back on a year shaped less by expansion and more by holding: maintaining a space, supporting others to make work, and allowing drawing to remain a shared, ongoing practice.

Back to Basics is a recurring drawing course at Look & Draw, and one that shifts slightly each time it’s taught. At its core is a simple, persistent question: what do we think drawing is supposed to be?