A friend has sent me a book by John Berger that is made up of dialogues on drawing. I have been reading a few pages at random. Here is a paragraph from one of the pages I read–I will return to the book in the future and offer you more from its pages:

When my father died recently, I did several drawings of him in his coffin. Drawings of his face and head. There is a story about Kokoschka teaching a life class. The students were uninspired. So he spoke to the model and instructed him to pretend to collapse. When he had fallen over, Kokoschka rushed over to him, listened to his heart and announced to the shocked students that he was dead. A little afterwards the model got to his feet and resumed the pose ‘Now draw him,’ said Kokoschka, ‘as though you were aware that he was alive and not dead.’

One can imagine that the students, after this theatrical experience, drew with more verve. Yet to draw the truly dead involves an even greater urgency. What you are drawing will never be seen again, by you or by anybody else.

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