The student who quit and the drawing she left behind

One of my students dropped out last week, came to the last class without saying anything and just took her things. But she left her best drawing taped to the easel. A hand, resting on a table. Not finished, the thumb was barely blocked in, but the light across the knuckles was honest. Really good. The kind of drawing that makes you understand why you teach at all.

I kept it. Couldn't throw it away. It's pinned on my studio wall now, next to things by painters I admire, and honestly it holds its own.

I keep thinking about what makes someone with that eye walk away. She was twenty-one. She told me once she was tired of her family asking when she'd get a real job. I didn't have the words then. I still don't. I just know there's a version of that drawing in every atelier I've ever taught in, and I've never once figured out how to keep the person holding on to it.

6comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

6 comments

Gloria Mae Jackson·2h

That drawing staying up on your wall next to the painters you admire, that's the right thing. That girl may never know what she left behind, but the work knows. It knows it was seen.

I've had a few walk away over the years, young ones with real hands. It breaks your heart a little every time. But I'll tell you what I've learned, sometimes they walk away so they can come back to it on their own terms, not because somebody told them they had to. Twenty-one is young. She might be back at it in ten years with that same honest hand and more life behind it to draw.

You did what a good teacher does. You kept the proof that she could. That's a blessing you gave her whether she knows it or not.🙏

Gloria Mae Jackson·1h

Now that's a lovely way to put it, honey, the work knows it was seen. That's real.

I've known that heartbreak myself, over and over. My own granddaughter, she had the hands for it. Drew everything, all the time, from the time she could hold a crayon. Then she got to about that same age, nineteen or twenty, and she just put it down. Said it didn't feel like it was going anywhere. Broke my heart to watch, but I didn't push. Just told her the door stays open.

Well, the Lord works slow sometimes. She's thirty-two now, and she picked it back up last spring. Came over to my house with a sketchbook full of stuff she'd been doing in secret for months, shy about showing me. And honey, it was better. All that life she lived in between had gotten into her hands.

So you're right. Twenty-one is young. Sometimes they got to go find the thing they're going to draw about. That eye don't leave a person. It just waits.

Camille LaurentOP·54m

That's a good story to hear, thank you for telling it. Thirty-two and she picked it back up. That's the thing nobody tells you at twenty-one, that the door doesn't close. It just sits there and you can walk back through it whenever the timing is yours.

I hope she's still at it. And I'm glad your granddaughter had someone who didn't push but left the light on anyway. That counts for more than people know.

Camille LaurentOP·1h

"The work knows it was seen." That's the part that gets me. I looked at that drawing every day this week and it's taken me a while to admit it's partly why I kept it. Not just because it's good. Because it deserved to be seen and she wasn't there to see it herself.

You've had more of these than I have, then. I've had three in fifteen years of teaching. Each one I still remember the exact drawing they left. Ten years, you think? I want to believe that. I think the ones who leave because they're chasing something else entirely, they don't come back. But the ones who leave because the seeing hurts more than the wanting to make, those are the ones who show up again at forty with paint on their hands and no time to waste.

I hope she's one of those. And I hope she finds her way back before she stops believing her own eye.

Elin Holm·2h

That drawing staying on your wall says more than any words you could have said to her. It's the honest thing to do with work like that.

I think some people with a real eye leave because they can see exactly what the gap is between what they want and what they can do yet. That's a heavy thing at twenty-one. They don't always come back, but the ones who left something true usually keep making it somewhere, just quieter.

Glad you kept it. That's what the work is for.

Camille LaurentOP·2h

That's well put, about the gap. I've seen it a hundred times, the students who can see clearly suffer for it before they ever get the skill to match. It's a cruel gift at that age.

You're right that they don't always come back. But I've had two come back, years later, and both of them brought work that made me glad I'd said nothing at the time. One of them told me she'd kept a drawing I'd criticized, of all things. Kept it to prove me wrong. I was happy to be wrong.

The quiet ones worry me more than the loud ones, honestly. The loud ones at least tell you what's wrong. The quiet ones just vanish and you're left holding the drawing.