Alison Watt

I have a shelf in my studio crammed with mismatched journals I have kept over the years. There are sketchbooks from high school, full of still lifes I'd set up in my kitchen and scenics I drew with stiff fingers, in the cold wind off Oak Bay, Victoria, where I grew up. The most dog-eared journal, full of sketches of church towers, windmills, and fields of sheep, I kept the year I back-packed around Europe. Recent journals (of every sort you can imagine--I am always looking for the right combination of papers) teem with notes and drawings from sailing the west coast as well as travels to places like Honduras and Patagonia. I am always surprised by the flood of vivid memories even the most faded drawings bring, the smells, sounds, and my preoccupations at the time.

It is accessing this rich source of pleasure and memory that I enjoy teaching, in my Keeping an Illustrated Journal courses, see Teaching page.