This year at The Dock, we are celebrating National Drawing Day with our Drawing Dancers workshop with Youth Artist in Residence Andy Parsons. Every year, the National Gallery of Ireland—together with dozens of museums, galleries, libraries, and cultural organisations all over the island of Ireland—encourages people to get drawing with a jam-packed day of free events for people of all ages.
Drawing and movement are inextricably linked, and many contemporary artists have explored the idea of drawing as something that involves the whole body.
Using the idea of movement in dance, artist Andy Parsons will take the iconic painting “The Dance” by Paula Rego as a starting point to invite participants to join him in creating a roomful of drawn dancers.
Rego’s lyrical 1988 painting of a group of dancers by the shore is also featured as an inspiration to the artists in The Dock’s current exhibition, ‘Na Cailleacha with reference to Paula Rego’
While Rego’s work is meticulous and realistic, the drawings in the workshop will be more abstract and spontaneous. The emphasis will be on expressiveness and movement and artworks can be very abstract.
Participants will work with a variety of media including charcoal and collage. The workshop room will be covered with paper, and participants can choose to draw directly or create collages that can be stuck to the wall. As each new dancer is added over course of the day the room will fill with movement and energy.
The session will be open to all ages and all abilities
