Drawing Dialogues | Chantal Joffe RA, Ishbel Myerscough and Ali Smith CBE

Event details

Date & time

8 October 2025, 7:00PM

Location

Online and in-person

Price

Free, booking required

Celebrated painters Chantal Joffe RA and Ishbel Myerscough are joined by award-winning novelist Ali Smith CBE for a conversation about portraiture, observation and the emotional truths revealed through drawing.

This conversation is part of our 25th anniversary series of conversations with leading artists and creatives exploring how drawing shapes creative practice across disciplines.

Join some of the world’s most visionary artists, designers, writers and thinkers as they reflect on the role of drawing in their work, from painting, performance and design to storytelling, architecture and science.

The Royal Drawing School's 25th anniversary exhibition and events are generously supported by Ralph Lauren, a valued partner of the School for over six years, helping to make high-quality drawing tuition accessible to all.

These drawings are hard to talk about. I made them after I’d been ill and was still recovering—they document what happened and were made in a frenzy. No mark was hard enough or fast enough. I used oil sticks so savagely that they got mashed up in the drawings. I also used pencils, pastels, crayons, and anything else that I had. Making these works made the unbearable bearable to me—I could put it outside myself. By drawing what happened, I could live with it.

Chantal Joffe

Pictures of What I Did Not See 12, 2019. Pastel, oil stick and pencil on paper, 42 x 59.4cm. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro

Chantal Joffe

Drawing is a language I feel I can speak and understand, more than words. With a piece of paper and something as simple as a pencil we can chart, discover, explain and inform, we can create a surprising magic: maps, emotions, illusions and history. A universal language that doesn’t need translation.

Ishbel Myerscough

Bella, 2021. Pencil and pastel on paper, 57 x 38cm. Photo: Richard Ivey

Ishbel Myerscough