The exhibition ‘Georgia O’Keeffe: Memories of Drawings’ presents 21 drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe from key moments throughout her career, many of these were completed early on.

“I was going to begin to make drawings. I thought, well I have a few things in my head that I never thought of putting down. But nobody else taught me. And I was going to begin with charcoal, and I wasn’t going to use any colour until I couldn’t do what I wanted to do with charcoal. And went on from there,” said O’Keeffe.

Taking a lesson from O’Keeffe’s passion for drawing with charcoal and the possibilities of expression through the medium, we invited drawing tutor Claire Sandars to spend a day in the New Brewery Arts gallery and get people to draw.

Armed with paper, charcoal - thank you so much Daler-Rowney for supporting the day with a ready supply of willow charcoal - and a range of O’Keeffe-inspired drawing prompts (flowers, shells, animal skulls and even an antler) we got to drawing and smudging.

One person made their drawing into a crown, and a family drew in a far more ‘performative’ way than we’d ever imagined.

Like O’Keeffe, drawing with charcoal freed up the drawing style and took us away from the still-life and towards more abstract shapes. But, also like O’Keeffe, there is still more we want to do with charcoal.

Find out more here.