Introduction

Drawing suffers from a popular misconception. When well done, drawing looks easy. The years of consistent and habituated effort to acquire skill, the piles of drawings that have long since been crumpled up and thrown away, are all invisible in the framed picture. Phenomenological research and writing is prone to a similar misconception. When well done, phenomenological writing, like drawing, may look deceptively easy. A “practice” implies a disciplined engagement of mind and body in an activity, and, most significantly, certain attitudes—ways of doing and being which one continues to learn over many years. Phenomenology is located within the larger family of “human science research” methodologies that are linked by a common interest in understanding and explicating the meanings of human experiences. Artists sometimes speak of drawing as a process of searching for a meaningful connection with their subject. Drawing and phenomenology both view phenomena from a particular vantage point, situated in the lifeworld.