6 Trial Lawyer • Spring 2022 By Karen Ruga Schoenfeld OTLA Guardian “Hold up your mirror and just draw what you see.” I saw a person who was tired after a long work day who was trying to sit through a 3-hour drawing class. I saw a daughter who was sad and angry over the too soon loss of her mother who was also her best friend. I saw a hard-working, probably overworked lawyer. I saw a supported and loved mother and wife. But how to draw what I was seeing? All I could think to use were circles and lines. So I did. It was a few weeks earlier, at a friend’s barbecue, when an acquaintance suggested I try a drawing class. It was in our neighborhood, he said. I have no time. The teacher was great he assured me. I don’t want to go back to school on top of everything else I’m dealing with. My art really improved from the class, he shared. Yah. Must be nice to have talent. I had zero. He kept at it. It might help you with the loss of your mom. He struck a nerve. Maybe he had a point. What did I have to lose? I always kind of gravitated to making art when I had some spare time, though that was rare. My mother, an artist when she was much younger, encouraged art for her three kids. But like her, raising a family didn’t leave much time for art. And I was a lawyer. I had chosen a career that was fairly all consuming. Running a busy law practice in Portland with my husband was exhilarating and fulfilling. Did I even need another challenge? I was already a snowboarder and ran marathons. Wasn’t that enough of a life? But with the death earlier that year of my mom from Alzheimer’s and my kids getting older, if I listened carefully I could almost hear a clock ticking. It was faint yes, but it was there. What else? What else? What else…. Hmmm. Why not a drawing class? Pencil in hand In the first class we were asked to draw a self portrait. Pick up a graphite pencil. And a mirror. Draw what you see. I drew some circles and some lines. I must have seen a stick figure. This was not going to be easy. Over the next eleven weeks, every Tuesday night, I returned to class to hear the craziest prompts. “Don’t draw what you expect to see. Only draw what you actually see.” Now we were using photographs of faces, some famous and recognizable to all, some not. Not our own. (Thank God.) We selected among the photographs our teacher offered to us that evening. And as we drew, we were guided by our teacher. Make markings on your page that you feel when you look at the face in the photograph. Let your eyes wander around the face and wherever your eyes land, make a mark on your page that reflects what you see. Or reflects how you feel like moving your hands at that moment. Or reflects the feeling you feel when you simply look. Well this was not going to be a scientific process I could already see that. I can’t use my law brain to navigate these tasks. And the music he just turned up loud was so good. I am floating... dancing... drawing Don’t get attached to how you think this is supposed to look. Just keep looking at your photograph. Use different kinds of markings. Maybe the shadows are a bunch of x’es. Maybe they’re squiggly lines. Don’t lift your pencil off the paper. Search out the lights. Search out the darks. There were many such suggestions by the teacher. And most of them, while goofy, were fun. A lot of them didn’t even sound like he was teaching us art. Was he teaching us art? And he strayed. He digressed. He made his points in a circular fashion. He had been an architect. Karen Ruga Schoenfeld Circles and Lines
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