Other voices

Heather’s friends and colleagues wrote many wonderful tributes to her in the days following her passing. Some came in email, some were gathered by organizations such as the League of Canadian Poets, some were on Facebook, etc. Another dear friend of Heather’s has shared the following. The Death of Heather SpearsMargaret Slavin Dyment On the…

the creative eye: a How-to-Draw Manual

The Creative Eye, drawing, vision and the brain – by Heather Spears is soon to be reissued ( Feb 2020) in black and white as a valuable manual to stand on bookshelves about Drawing and How to Draw everywhere.

Blog 13: Finding a Drawing after 27 Years

It happened when Lise Lindstrøm contacted me and told me I had drawn her little boy in the main teaching hospital in Copenhagen, Rigshospitalet in 1991. I’d given her a copy then, and she wondered whether I still had the original, because she wanted to buy it. Luckily I had kept all my baby drawings, right from…

PALESTINE

This is about drawings made long ago, in Palestine, how they came about, and what happened to them. During the Iran-Iraq war I read about child soldiers. Having drawn mostly babies and children in crisis– in hospitals, at *trials – I wanted to draw these child soldiers, but the risks seemed unsurmountable. Then came the…

Special Care Nurseries: the end of drawing

  Looking back on my life, I realize how extraordinarily lucky I have been. I came to what was to become the central theme of my artist’s lífe at exactly the right time, and I am leaving it at exactly the right time – when it, and I, are no longer available to one another.…

Blog 10 – a censored show

  Last spring I applied for a drawing project and exhibition in the UK – to draw again at Oxford’s famous John Radcliffe Hospital, and this time to show in their gallery as well. There was much positive correspondence,  and I got a grant from Tegnernes Fornening (the graphic artist’s association in Denmark) to frame and…

Blog 9: reading the smile, in photos and in drawings

I mean here by reading: recognizing an expression – a universal ability. These are blog speculations about the illusion of the smile, the fixed smile, the difference between how we look at photos and at drawings. Up to now I had not thought about it so much; usually, if parents wanted me to draw after…

Drawing the smile – Blog 8

A mother ordered several drawings from photos taken in hospital of her stillborn son. The baby alone, with his four-year-old sister, her with the baby or with both children. She had chosen eight. One she wanted was a “selfie” – the three of them lying close together in bed, with the baby in the centre.…

Blog 7 -Drawing Bell Ringers

Blog 7 – Drawing bell-ringers Thanks to Tegnerne’ (Graphic Artists’) Copyright Fund  I was able to take an exhibition to Oxford and spend 5 weeks there in August and September 2016. My birth- and neonatal drawings were hung in the gallery at the John Radcliffe Hospital. I also planned to draw there, but administrative haggling about…

Blog 6 – Round Drawings – an exercise from The Creative Eye

1. The day before The Danes have a new way of entertaining their employees at get-togethers. Today I am off to teach 40-45 people to draw the nude model in 1½ hours. They are staff at a discotheque and this is their annual Christmas party. It is to be a surprise – they have not…