IN VILLA EZZAHRA, A SERENE HIDEAWAY on the outskirts of Marrakesh, one of Northern Ireland’s finest artists, Colin Watson, is trying to teach me the rudiments of figurative painting. He’s a super teacher, patient and perceptive, but it’s no easy task. I was an avid artist as a child, but I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in 40 years, and what used to feel like a natural process now seems entirely alien. I’m not alone.
For millions like me, the ability to translate what I see in front of me into a realistic drawing or painting has become a lost art — something our computerised age has forsaken. How did it happen? How did this elemental skill, something mankind has cultivated since the dawn of time, become so obscure and esoteric?
Two reasons: the remorseless advance of film and photography into every corner of our lives, and the remorseless marginalisation of figurative painting in the brave new world of modern art. Here in this
