Hey, Everyone, check out this month’s Shambhala Sun Magazine (pp. 66, 69 and 70), July ’08. I have some watercolor figure paintings featured. They’ve surprised everyone—although, in fact, I’ve been teaching figure drawing for over twenty years and have always loved drawing the human body.
At one point in my art career (I was in my thirties at the time), several artist in the neighborhood got together and hired a model. We did this once a week. Gradually the group dwindled to just two of us and later just me. (Models were paid much less in those days.) I did this for several years. Often the drawings were quite large, sometimes more than life size. I’d roll the paper out on the floor to draw. They were line drawings. My request for a Christmas gift back then was a battery operated pencil sharpener. I would sharpen four-dozen pencils at a time; when one broke (and they did often because I was bearing down hard) I always had another by my side. People often think they are ink drawings because the pencil line is so firm. I now have a drawer full of these drawings. Occasionally I look through them.
I developed a way of working that in many respects is similar to my paintings. The figure took up more than the page, often extended beyond the paper. The space was very important to me, both the form of the body and how the space was used by the body, by where the body was and was not. Sometimes it was hard to see at first where the body was because so much of it was off the paper. It’s hard to explain, but the important point here is the similarity to my painting process. I’m drawn (pun intended) to mass and contour, to a sensuous space and eccentric (off-center) composition. And it can be done with or without a recognizable image. I’m most comfortable with the purity of abstraction, the removal from concept and context . With the freedom that gives me