Giving up online lessons restored my confidence

AN art teacher from Henley said that returning to her own creative practice has turned the world “technicolour”.

Jo Harris, 49, who runs the Henley School of Art, has decided to stop the school’s online workshops which have been running since the coronavirus pandemic in favour of in-person tuition.

Miss Harris said that whilst she was sad to leave her online community, she had taken the decision to allow her to spend more time rediscovering her own creativity.

She will continue to offer some one-off online tuition but is focussing her efforts on one-to-one in-person tutoring and creative mentoring classes, in-person workshops and demonstrations.

The art school, which opened eight years ago, first went online after it was forced to leave its premises in Hart Street following the pandemic.

Miss Harris had initially tried to return to in-person lessons in September 2021 following the final lockdown but was forced two months later to move the school online due to low turnout.

She said: “Since the pandemic people have been very mistrusting of public spaces. It meant that fewer students came back and I was getting more and more into debt.

“For a year it was really terrible. I was so sad, it had taken nearly seven years to get to where it was. I managed to stay afloat during covid by borrowing money and doing lots of things to pay the rent.

“I went online and it meant that I could keep the school open and the students could come back.”

Following the closure of the studio Miss Harris began to offer online workshops for students not just in Henley but across the globe.

“It was extraordinary” she said. “We had people from all over Europe, Brazil, America, Australia, and we had models from all over the world. It made the world seem like a sweet small community. It was a beautiful experience. I loved it and it kept me going financially.”

Despite enjoying teaching online Miss Harris found that it was becoming unsustainble and she began neglecting her own work.

She said: “During the Christmas break a nagging anxiety started to creep over me, it began a bit like that awful ‘going back to school after a long summer holiday’ type feeling, but it kept growing until it became overwhelming.

“I’d noticed that I’d really been enjoying being offline. As an experiment I removed Instagram and Facebook, I even banned the phone from my bedroom.

“I expected to last no more than 24 hours, but it turns out to have been one of the best things I could ever have done.

“After only a few days my perpetual brain-fog lifted significantly, I was filled with the urge to create new work again, my imagination stretched it’s poor, crumpled body and now found endless space to expand.

“I hadn’t noticed how much I had been suffocating my brain with such a cacophony of noise and now the silence and space it’s left is addictive.”

Miss Harris found the online lessons were becoming hard to run alongside her other teaching commitments, which include guest tutoring at a sixth form college, running the art school’s 10-week in-person courses and delivering talks and demonstrations.

She said: “It started to dawn on me just how much social media and online interaction our glorious drawing sessions require to run well. I hadn’t realised the full extent of it until I had a break, but the organising, marketing, post-session images and responding to messages all had to take place during times when I was supposed to be resting.”

Miss Harris began to return to her roots as an artist and began experimenting from her renovated garage studio at her home in Newtown Gardens.

She said: “It’s the thing I am most proud of in the world. Like with having children you have to make sacrifices and with the art school that was my own artistic practice.

“This sweet studio has everything I have owned since I was 12. This beautiful space has given me a lot of confidence back. I hadn’t realised how unenergised or how low I had become in my own mental health. It was a slow decline.

“The minute I started experimenting and creating the world became technicolour again. It was like I had forgotten about colour. Being able to use the brain in a way that isn’t mundane is so good for the spirit.

“It makes me so happy, just allowing myself some creative freedom again and using techniques I had forgotten about.”

Miss Harris started her return to in-person tutoring after she began to teach life drawing classes at The Phoenix studio near Thame which she continues to run.

She said: “That class really gave me confidence back in teaching and now I teach workshops and small classes of my own.

“The energy exchange and the reward you get from in person teaching is just so different. Online I can’t see what they are doing, and I can’t properly know if they have understood what I have said or see the marks they are making.”

Miss Harris said that despite the art school’s changing format she remains passionate about it remaining in Henley.

She said: “I am helping people prepare for art college and people who are retired who never got a chance to study. It’s so much more varied and interesting now.

“Out of adversity has come this beautiful and much more fulfilling thing. There was no option to give up. I had spent seven years cultivating this notion that Henley should have an art school. It’s critical that people have access to creativity.

“Mental Health is so prevalent at the minute and if you have the slightest urge to be creative and squash it, you are stopping it from getting out and that can lead to severe depression.

“People come to a class stressed but excited to do something creative. The people who leave walk out on a cloud. Tired but blissful.”

Not abandoning online content forever, Miss Harris plans to film a series of five-minute art tip videos as well as longer tutorials, both which will be rented from the website in September.

Miss Harris said she was pleased to have seen the school through its difficult period following the pandemic. She said: “I think in life if you just keep going even if it feels like everything is lost, you are on the right track even if it looks like it has imploded. The track gets easier and it turns into beautiful pastures.”