The drawing and doodles of D. W. Winnicott

“Playing is an experience, always a

creative experience, and it is an experience in the space-time continuum, a

basic form of living.”- D. W. Winnicott

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

These drawing and doodles have been selected from some of Winnicott’s letters and notes, and are intended to show the easy playfulness he brought to domestic life [CW 12:5:1].

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

The reverse of a note Winnicott sent to his secretary Joyce Coles and her husband Arthur in May 1968 wishing them a good holiday – presumably to Italy – and asking them whether they had been caught in the spring’s general strikes.

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

Frustrated Sculpture (Wanted to be an Ordinary Thing).

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

A sketch drawn inside The Times, 14 November, 1963.

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

‘I have not drawn many more cats since someone thought one of my best was a mouse’.

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

A Christmas card design.

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

Sketches of the interior and view of Winnicott’s consulting rooms at 87 Chester Square, London. Both images were sent by Donald and Clare Winnicott on Christmas cards.

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott

A doodle in a letter to Joyce Coles from the United States in 1968, before his illness, which Winnicott described as a ‘composite made out of [a] study of my foot’.

from The Collected Works of D. W. Winnicott