A Legacy of Moments of Noticing
A little sketch by Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Rowell, (My wonderful Nan!) Primrose Cottage, 23rd August 1998
On Anniversaries, Sketchbooks& Fence Posts
It’s hard to believe that it was eighteen years ago last Friday, my husband and I tied the knot. To celebrate, we treated ourselves to a nice meal in a French restaurant. It amused us greatly when the very kind waitress said the staff had been rather puzzled by our age and had imagined we would be much older when we booked the table!
“We’ll take that” we both said!
When milestones and anniversaries come around, it’s easy to reflect on how quickly those eighteen years have flown. So many unexpected moments, mountains, molehills and memories, all leaving life a little richer in some way than it was before.
Last summer saw the passing of one of my greatest artistic influences, my Nannie Libs - Libby as she was affectionately known to her many friends. Over her long life of ninety-six years, she collected a wealth of moments and memories, many of which can be now treasured by her family, through her many sketchbooks. It was a privilege last year, to carefully scan, page by page, each little book.
Eight of them are home to a very special collection of fences and gate posts.
She instinctively took a sketchbook with her everywhere. Not to capture the biggest landmarks or the most touristy scenic places (although she had many a painting and beautiful drawings of these too!). But to simply make marks and note memories.
I’ve always had a love hate relationship with my sketchbooks.
With shelves stacked and a wooden chest filled with so many ‘half-finished’ ones, I often had a fear of ‘ruining’ the page with something I didn’t like or wasn’t very proud of.
At art college, sketchbooks were evidence of coursework to be marked. How well have we explored an idea? How original was our concept? Had we developed our thoughts enough and resolved the artist brief? The sketchbook stopped being a place to wonder and became a place where you had to prove that you were wondering correctly!
It’s a transformative thing to lose the sense of not wanting to ‘waste paper’ and to start feeling the freedom in just exploring what wants to be captured. For no one else to mark or for tutors to ‘critique’, but for simply the joy of the process in capturing something that has caught your eye.
I don’t think Nannie Libs ever set out to make a collection of her ‘Post Books’ for the sake of them being treasured one day, it just so happens that they have now become little precious time capsules.
Scanning those pages last year, ignited something deep within me.
It felt like a returning to a way of looking that had been dormant for many years. A way of seeing colours, shadows, outlines and potential paintings with that little thought of ‘Ooo I’d like to capture that’.
The thing that stays with me from ‘Libby’s Post Books’ isn’t simply the quality of the drawings (although they are super cute!). It’s the evidence of a life being lived through ‘Moments of Noticing’.
What moves me is I can see how she looked at the world. She noticed things, captured thoughts, sounds, posts, people and places. She stopped long enough to draw them. She was curious, she wondered and appreciated the world around her.
And now long after those moments have passed, there is an inheritance of a life lived attentively. A record of looking and noticing.
Returning to the sketchbooks now has a different meaning for me. The page doesn’t have to be finished to be precious, scribbles don’t need to be particularly beautiful, half-finished drawings can simply say ‘I saw the beauty and wanted to capture this’. Not all my marks need to ‘become art’.
They are a record of a living process. I am practising no longer worrying about ‘ruining’ a record of life! So what if a page or two has a coffee (or cake!) stain, a wonky drawing, a scribble, a half-finished idea! This is simply evidence of the sketchbooks being used.
We never really know who may treasure something.
As I looked through the sketchbook entries again this morning, I wondered whether Nannie Libs might have happened to draw something on this very date. And there it was, a page dated 23rd August from 1998.
A ‘Moment of Noticing’ carried across 28 years.
What would you put in a sketchbook if you stopped worrying about making it beautiful, and simply used it to remember how you noticed the world?
Until next Sunday…
🌿 May you find inspiration in nature this week.
Tracey Anne x
