Dec 262013
 

PAGE 34

Seventy-five minutes

This is the longest pose I have ever done. They are greedy. The Professionals. They’ve got studios in remote Dales barns. They live by their art.

I like how they are so engrossed in me. They are single-minded. They are the only group who don’t make themselves drinks halfway through. Because they are focused. Driven. This is their real life. Their drawings and paintings are awesome.

I will not say. I will not say how much this hurts.

I ask around the group for anyone who’d like to do a ‘skills exchange’ instead of money: I can offer some hours of modelling in return for anyone who will come and build me a bookcase. This guy Steve who shares a studio with his wife, a weaver, jumps at it.


This week’s topic

34. Does ‘looked at’ mean owned and controlled?

Or is this just an example of mad feminist analysis?
Click on the above to add your thoughts.

Or to avoid the Regiment of Women altogether, see here for the list of other discussions on life-drawing and Life to be found on my blog.

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Noticeboard

Today is Boxing Day (December 26th, for my non-British readers) 2013. I have been too busy to create a gallery of the paintings of me being the Virgin Mary – a six-hour pose I carried out last Saturday in Suki’s Life Room, using a crib and baby Jesus borrowed from Bradford Cathedral. So for the time being, here is the painting by Lois Brothwell. More to follow. Happy Christmas!
Lois Brothwell Xmas

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Artist of the week

DOUGLAS BINDER has for the past two years regularly employed me as the life-model for the group that draws at Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax, UK (click here and scroll to Halifax for details of this open-to-all group), for which I am deeply grateful. My income is otherwise very irregular.
Painter-in-residence Doug is not only a contemporary of David Hockney, he was the actual friend who brought David the bottle of peroxide to bleach his hair for the first time.
Click here to watch Bel‘s lovely LIFE ROOM: Dean Clough three-minute audio-visual piece (with mellow jazz accompaniment) which shows Doug and the rest at work and will make you – I hope – wish to attend! It’s Mondays, half-day or all day.

By the way, the above pose is one of a series I carried out at Dean Clough, copied from my book of Lucien Freud‘s paintings.
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