Clara Drummond
- Faculty
- Alumni, 2005
Biography
Clara Drummond studied Modern Languages at Cambridge before completing The Drawing Year at The Prince's Drawing School (now the Royal Drawing School) in 2005. She was awarded the Bulldog Award by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Young Artist of the Year Prize by the Society of Women Artists and has had four portraits accepted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Gallery. Group shows include the Jerwood Drawing Prize and The Garrick/Milne Prize. She has had solo shows in Galeribox, Iceland, The Lookout, Aldeburgh, Edel Assanti, Flowers Gallery and most recently with the Museums of Cambridge exhibition 'Discoveries' at Two Temple Place, London. She teaches with the Royal Drawing School at Drawing School West and Drawing School Central and with the Saatchi Gallery and is currently the recipient of the George Crabbe Drawing Residency at Great Glemham, Suffolk.
On drawing
I believe that drawing from observation is a way of understanding, a form of discovery, that when one draws something one looks at that thing with an intensity and concentration that illuminates it and changes the way we see.
I try to approach my work in this way, never assuming or relying on preconceived ideas, but seeking always to discover anew, and respond to what I see before me rather than drawing what I know.
When one is drawing something from nature its internal logic reveals itself gradually and one becomes conscious of the unity, order and symmetry that underlies all natural forms. I felt this most acutely when drawing the fossil of an Ichthyosaur, a dolphin-like creature that once swam through prehistoric seas.
To me, drawing and the natural form are deeply connected, and whether drawing on the walls of caves or carving an image or form into bone, one has the sense that man's first impulse to create was in direct response to the natural world.
