How artists write in a doctoral writing circle

To be open to the experience of portraiture was my problem, not Cam's - he was already there. He drew on and on with his pencil barely leaving the page, continuous lines, drawing me, almost without looking at me, drawing not thinking, as I tussled around scribbling, rubbing and crossing out, thinking too much. So watching him, in the thick of it, I wanted to find a way to shift my focus from making a 'good' portrait, one that 'looks like Cam', to a work that was a kind of infectious conversation between us. I really didn't know where to start. I knew I was desperate to generate conversation but what did Cam want? I decided not to talk about it and we began, with trial and error, to experiment on the same page. After a while, this was the way we met.