Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr is the former BBC political editor, a distinguished journalist and writer, but he considers his daily art practice to be a central part of his life and the way in which he expresses himself most deeply. In two recent books on painting and drawing,1 he asserts the unfashionable view that a painting is, above all, an object with a subject, a form of communication, a narrative or message that cannot be expressed in words. He says: “During the second half of the 20th century and into the current one we have lived through an art period which often insists that the art object should be considered in and of itself.

“To ask, ‘What’s it about?’ has become a fundamental category error. But we can survive only for so long by thinking simply about the paint, the making, the pure gesture. Art history has always been the history of statements and stories. They have been religious and ritual stories, statements about industrialisation, or political statements, but for almost all that long time, art has been ‘about’ – and in no way independent of – the rest of the human story. My pictures, for better or worse, always have a subject.”

I’ve been drawing every day in my diary for years; originally, representative drawings and in recent years more “abstract” ones. It’s a kind of daily discipline. These ones here came from when I moved to A4 size last year. I was reading Thomas Mann and thinking about recent walks in the Scottish west Highlands… Trying to draw about feelings is really hard but I find, more interesting.